^; 


The 

»#  ETERNAL  >j^ 
SS    CHRIST    SJ 


JOSEPH 

FORT 
NEWTON 


;-^^~ 

m. 


's.' 


tihxavy  of  Che  trheolo^ical  ^eminarjo 

PRINCETON  •  NEW  JERSEY 
PRESENTED  BY 

The  Estate  of  the 
Rev.  John  B.  Wiedinger 

BR  123  .N47  1912  ^ 

Newton,  Joseph  Fort,  1876- 

1950. 
The  eternal  Christ 


The  Eternal  Christ 


^"i  Of  nm^ 


The  Eternal  Chtisi 


^ 


JN   2    1948 


^/CAL  iV^ 


Studies  in  the  Life  of 
Vision  and  Service 


By 
JOSEPH  FORT 'NEWTON,  Lit.  D. 

Author  of**  David  Swing  :  Poet-Preacher  y^ 
**  Lincoln  and  Herndon,''^  etc. 


New  York         Chicago         Toronto 

Fleming  H.  Revell  Company 

London        and        Edinburgh 


Copyright,  19 12,  by 
FLEMING  H.  REVELL  COMPANY 


New  York:  158  Fifth  Avenue 
Chicago:  125  North  Wabash  Ave. 
Toronto:  25  Richmond  Street,  W. 
London:  21  Paternoster  Square 
Edinburgh:      100    Princes    Street 


To  My  Mother 
Sue  Green  Newton 

A  sweet  Christian  Mystic 

Who  first  taught  me  of 

The  Eteriial  Christ 


Foreword 

THESE  studies  speak  for  themselves, 
dealing  as  they  do  with  great  themes 
in  a  popular  manner,  and,  it  is  hoped, 
with  some  glow  and  colour.  They  are  meant  to 
aid  those  who  are  bewildered  by  the  voices  of 
the  age,  and  its  whirling  eddies,  by  showing  that 
the  realities  of  faith  are  still  real,  abiding,  and 
may  be  trusted.  Each  man  has  his  point  of 
view,  his  vision  and  his  dream,  but  these  great 
truths  are  ours  in  common,  though  we  may  see 
them  from  varying  angles.  They  unite  us,  and 
should  draw  us  into  one  vast  communion  of 
vision  of  service,  that  each  may  share  the  faith 
of  all. 

What  is  truly  religious  is  ultimately  reason- 
able, but  reason  alone  is  not  enough.  Those 
who  have  had  an  overwhelming  sense  of  spiritual 
reality  did  not  have  any  other  faculties  or  any 
other  facts  than  those  may  be  aware  of  who  have 
no  such  assurance.  It  is  as  a  man  thinks,  and 
unless  we  think  of  religious  truth  religiously,  from 
the  inside,  it  must  ever  seem  dim.  One  grave 
defect  of  our  age  is  a  lack  of  definite  purpose  and 
method  in  the  culture  of  the  inner  life,  which  of 
itself  is  quite  enough  to  account  for  our  penury  of 

7 


8  FOREWORD 

faith,  without  resort  to  intellectual  doubt.  If 
these  little  essays  induce  a  sweeter  mood,  or  a 
deeper  habit  of  heart,  they  will  be  of  aid  to  those 
who  would  live  the  life  of  faith. 

All  through  there  is  a  recurring  emphasis  on 
the  Hves  and  teachings  of  the  great  mystics,  in 
the  belief  that,  as  those  mighty  spirits  kept  our 
faith  aflame  in  other  and  darker  ages,  so  they 
may  help  to  renew  and  make  more  victorious  the 
faith  of  our  day.  For  the  rest,  once  assured  that 
what  the  prophets  see  is  there,  we  may  rejoice 
in  the  Unity  of  Faith  and  speak  its  melodious  lan- 
guage, and  by  the  Culture  of  the  Soul  attain,  it 
may  be,  to  fellowship  with  the  Eternal  Christ, 
whose  we  are,  and  whom  we  should  serve  while 
it  is  day,  ere  the  night  cometh. 

J.  F.  N. 
Cedar  Rapids y  Iowa. 


Contents 

The  Prophetic  Vision 

I. 

What  Prophets  Sff. 

.       13 

II. 

Is  It  There?    .         .        •        . 

22 

III. 

Eyes  That  See  Not         .        , 

.       29 

IV. 

The  Basis  of  Faith 

.       36 

V. 

The  Path  to  Reality 

The  Unity  of  Faith 

.       51 

I. 

Things  Which  Differ     . 

.      63 

II. 

The  Deeper  Unities 

.       71 

III. 

The  Higher  Harmony     . 

.       80 

IV. 

The  Prose  of  Faith 

.      91 

V. 

Truth  For  To-day  . 

The  Culture  of  the  Soul 

.     100 

I. 

The  Secret  of  Power 

.     Ill 

II. 

What  Is  Personality?     . 

.     119 

III. 

The  Abysmal  Depths 

.     129 

IV. 

The  Winged  Victory 

.     137 

V. 

The  Lines  of  Life  . 

The  Living  Word  of  Truth 

.     148 

I. 

Foreshadowings 

•     157 

II. 

The  Word  Made  Flesh  . 

.     167 

III. 

The  Living  Presence 

.     179 

IV. 

The  New  Advent    . 

.     187 

The  Prophetic  Vision 


Is  what  the  poet,  the  seer,  the  prophet 
sees  there  ?  If  so,  why  do  not  all  see  it  ? 
If  not,  what  does  he  make  it  out  of  ? 


I 

WHAT  PROPHETS  SEE 

IS  what  the  prophet  sees  there  ?  Soon  or 
late  every  thinker  must  come  to  terms  with 
this  question,  else  it  will  confront  him  at 
every  turn  of  the  road.  He  must  face  it  squarely 
and  answer  it,  if  he  can,  without  taking  anything 
for  granted ;  for  when  we  assume  what  most 
needs  evidence  we  have  always  a  feeling  of  in- 
security and  a  hollow  sound  beneath  our  foot- 
steps. As  all  must  see,  such  an  inquiry  goes 
down  to  the  roots  of  faith,  and  if  the  answer  here 
suggested  does  not  satisfy  all,  let  it  be  kept  in 
mind  that  the  final  answer  lies  beyond  words, 
and  is  a  victory  which  every  man  must  win  for 
himself. 

Our  argument  for  and  against  in  such  matters 
is  but  the  echo  of  a  deeper  debate,  and  the  rea- 
sons for  faith,  ample  as  they  are,  persuade,  when 
they  persuade  at  all,  by  the  aid  of  processes  pro- 
founder  than  logic  and  unshakable  by  it.  When 
a  man  loses  faith  and  wields  the  logic  of  denial, 
some  acid  in  his  soul,  distilled  of  we  know  not 
how  many  ingredients,  has  dissolved  the  pearl  of 
great  price,  and  he  speaks  to  a  deaf  ear  who 

13 


14  THE  PROPHETIC  VISION 

hopes  by  logic  to  win  him  to  faith  again.  No 
more  could  Newman  follow  the  path  whereby, 
midway  in  life,  intellectual  difficulties  ceased  to 
be  spiritual  doubts,  and  he  arrived  at  an  assur- 
ance of  faith  never  afterwards  disturbed.*  The 
process  which  alters  the  inner  life  of  a  man,  melts 
his  bias,  and  disposes  him  to  faith,  is  complex, 
and  we  can  no  more  analyze  it  than  we  can 
fathom  the  deep  heart  of  man. 

Hence  the  exceeding  delicacy  and  difficulty 
attaching  to  a  study  of  this  nature,  and  the  error 
of  regarding  it  as  merely  an  adventure  in  phi- 
losophy. Faith  has  nothing  to  fear  in  the  open 
court  of  philosophy,  and  perhaps  as  little  to  hope 
for,  unless  it  be  to  show  that  the  path  to  reahty 
lies  elsewhere.  One  need  not  shrink  from  the 
most  searching  criticism,  though  one  may  well 
despair  of  putting  the  highest  reasons  for  faith 
into  the  form  of  a  syllogism.  All  that  is  asked 
is  that  the  critic  come  to  the  inquiry  with  a  mind 
fine  enough  to  feel  the  issues  involved,  which 
include  not  only  the  faiths  of  religion,  but  the 
vision  of  the  poet  and  the  value  of  science  as 
well. 

But  let  us  first  ask,  What  is  it  that  poets,  seers 
and  prophets  see  ?  To  them  it  is  given  to  be- 
hold, with  varying  degrees  of  lucidity,  an  unseen 
world  of  spiritual  reality,  a   realm  of  light  and 

» "  Apologia  Fro   Vita  Sua,"  by  J.  H.  Newman,  Chap,  V 
(1865). 


WHAT  PROPHETS  SEE  15 

truth  and  beauty  whence  come  all  compelling 
inspirations,  all  inward  renewals,  all  intimations 
of  things  to  be.  The  reahty  of  God,  the  sov- 
ereign authority  of  the  moral  law,  the  worth  of 
the  soul  and  its  citizenship  in  the  unseen,  the 
spiritual  basis  of  Hfe  and  society,  the  beauty  of 
holiness  and  the  holiness  of  beauty — these  are 
the  things  of  which  they  bear  witness.  With 
one  accord  they  proclaim  that  life  is  spiritual 
activity  and  intelligence ;  that  the  underlying 
and  almighty  reality  is  the  living  God ;  that  the 
visible  and  tangible  world  is  but  a  shadow,  or  a 
symbol,  of  the  real ;  that  the  human  spirit  is 
akin  to  the  Eternal  Spirit,  and  may  participate 
in  the  absolutely  real  life  of  the  universe.  They 
hold,  or  rather  they  know,  that  man  is  a  citizen 
of  two  worlds,  using  the  scenery  of  one  to  make 
vivid  the  ineffable  truths  of  the  other ;  and  this 
insight,  if  valid,  is  the  supreme  gift  of  man. 
Listen  and  behold : 

"  In  the  year  that  King  Uzziah  died  I  saw  the 
Lord  sitting  upon  a  throne,  high  and  lifted  up, 
and  His  train  filled  the  temple.  About  it  stood 
the  seraphims  ;  each  one  had  six  wings ;  with 
twain  He  did  cover  His  face,  and  with  twain  He 
covered  His  feet,  and  with  twain  He  did  fly. 
And  one  cried  unto  another,  and  said,  Holy, 
holy,  holy,  is  the  Lord  of  hosts  ;  the  whole 
earth  is  full  of  His  glory.  And  posts  of  the 
door  moved  at  the  voice  of  him  that  cried,  and 


l6  THE   PROPHETIC  VISION 

the  house  was  filled  with  smoke.  Then  said  I, 
Woe  is  me  !  for  I  am  undone ;  because  I  am  a 
man  of  unclean  lips,  and  I  dwell  in  the  midst  of 
a  people  of  unclean  lips  ;  for  mine  eyes  have  seen 
the  King,  the  Lord  of  hosts.  .  .  .  Also  I 
heard  the  voice  of  the  Lord,  saying,  Whom  shall 
I  send,  and  who  will  go  for  us  ?  Then  said  I, 
Here  am  I ;  send  me."  * 

"  But  Stephen,  being  full  of  the  Holy  Ghost, 
looked  steadfastly  into  heaven,  and  saw  the  glory 
of  God,  and  Jesus  standing  on  the  right  hand  of 
God.  And  he  said,  Behold,  I  see  the  heavens 
opened,  and  the  Son  of  Man  standing  on  the 
right  hand  of  God.  .  .  .  And  they  stoned 
Stephen,  calling  upon  God,  and  saying.  Lord 
Jesus,  receive  my  spirit.  And  he  kneeled  down, 
and  cried  with  a  loud  voice.  Lord,  lay  not  this 
sin  to  their  charge.  And  when  he  had  said  this, 
he  fell  asleep."  ^ 

"  Then  Paul  stretched  forth  his  hand  and  an- 
swered for  himself:  At  midday,  O  King,  I  saw 
in  the  way  a  light  from  heaven,  above  the  bright- 
ness of  the  sun,  shining  round  about  me  and 
them  that  journeyed  with  me.  And  when  we 
were  all  fallen  to  the  earth,  I  heard  a  voice  speak- 
ing unto  me,  and  saying  in  the  Hebrew  tongue, 
Saul,  Saul,  why  persecutest  thou  Me  ?  it  is  hard 
for  thee  to  kick  against  the  pricks.  And  I  said, 
Who  art  Thou,  Lord  ?     And  He  said,  I  am  Jesus 

*  Isaiah  vi.  1-8.  ^Acts  vii.  55-60. 


WHAT  PROPHETS  SEE  1 7 

whom  thou  persecutest.  But  rise,  and  stand  upon 
thy  feet :  for  I  have  appeared  unto  thee  for  this 
purpose,  to  make  thee  a  minister  and  a  witness 
both  of  these  things  which  thou  hast  seen,  and  of 
those  things  in  which  I  will  appear  unto  thee, 
delivering  thee  from  the  people,  and  from  the 
Gentiles,  unto  whom  now  I  send  thee.  .  .  . 
Whereupon,  O  King  Agrippa,  I  was  not  dis- 
obedient unto  the  heavenly  vision."  * 

Add  that  exalted  day  in  the  life  of  St.  Paul, 
when  he  was  caught  up  into  the  third  heaven, 
knowing  not  whether  he  was  in  the  body  or  not, 
and  heard  things  of  which  it  is  not  lawful  to 
speak.  Add  the  strange  and  stately  visions  of 
the  prisoner  of  Patmos,  adumbrating  in  vague 
apocalyptic  forms  the  shadows  of  things  yet  to 
come,  to  an  accompaniment  of  majestic  music. 
Add,  also,  the  whole  array  of  Christian  saints  and 
heresiarchs,  including  the  greatest — Bernard, 
Loyola,  St.  Francis,  Santa  Teresa,  Joan  of  Arc, 
Luther,  Wesley,  Fox — to  all  of  whom  came  vi- 
sions, voices,  and  open  windows  of  divine  sur- 
prise. Recall  how,  as  with  St.  Paul,  words 
sounded  in  their  inner  ears — sometimes  new  and 
commanding  words,  sometimes  words  old  and 
familiar,  but  with  new  and  dynamic  meanings, 
Augustine,  in  a  garden  at  Milan,  heard,  "  Take 
up  and  read  "  ;  Francis  of  Assisi,  "  Get  you  no 
gold  nor  silver  nor  brass  in  your  purses,  no  wallet 

1  Acts  xxvi.  I,  1 3- 1 9. 


l8  THE  PROPHETIC  VISION 

for  your  journey,  neither  two  coats,  nor  shoes, 
nor  staff"  ;  Suso,  "  My  son,  if  thou  wilt  hear  My 
words  "  ;  Luther,  "  The  just  shall  live  by  faith  " ; 
Tauler,  "  Stand  fast  in  peace  and  trust  in  God  "  ; 
and  Jutta  received  her  call  from  familiar  verses 
in  the  Psalter.  When  one  remembers  these  men 
and  women,  and  others  like  them,  the  lives  they 
lived  and  the  wonders  they  wrought,  their  spirit- 
ual discernment  and  magnetic  speech,  one  can 
agree  with  Thomas  Carlyle : 

*'  These  are  properly  our  Men,  the  guides  of 
the  dull  host  which  follow  them  by  an  irrevocable 
decree.  They  are  the  chosen  of  the  world ;  they 
had  the  rare  faculty  not  only  of  *  supposing  '  and 
*  inclining  to  think,'  but  of  knowing  and  believ- 
ing :  the  nature  of  their  being  was  that  they 
lived  not  by  hearsay,  but  by  clear  Vision :  while 
others  hovered  and  swam  along,  in  the  grand 
Vanity  Fair  of  the  World,  blinded  by  the  mere 
Show  of  things,  these  saw  into  the  Things  them- 
selves, and  could  walk  as  men  having  an  eternal 
lode-star  and  with  their  feet  on  sure  paths.  .  .  . 
Such  knowledge  of  the  transceiidental,  immeas- 
urable character  of  Duty  w^e  call  the  basis  of  all 
the  Gospels,  the  essence  of  all  Religions  :  he  who 
with  his  soul  knows  not  this  as  yet  knows  noth- 
ing, as  yet  is  properly  nothing." 

What  is  true  of  the  prophets  and  seers  is  true, 
in  less  degree,  of  their  kinsmen  the  poets,  though 
in  this  study  attention   is  naturally  fixed  on  the 


WHAT   PROPHETS  SEE  I9 

former.  The  witness,  for  example,  of  the  genius 
of  Shakespeare  *  to  the  spiritual  meaning  of  life 
is  overwhelming  ;  which  is  the  more  remarkable 
from  the  fact  that  he  is  not  professedly,  perhaps 
not  consciously,  a  teacher  of  faith,  but  an  artist 
portraying  with  glorious  vision  the  pageant  of 
our  human  hfe.  When,  therefore,  his  insight, 
by  its  very  depth  and  veracity,  becomes  a  testi- 
mony in  behalf  of  spiritual  reality  and  the  moral 
order  of  the  world,  all  men  must  listen.  Truly 
did  Henry  Morley  say  that  his  dramas  form  A  Lay 

*  All  Drama  has  to  do  with  Divinity.  In  the  early  plays  of 
Shakespeare  the  Divinity  actively  intervenes  all  through  the 
play,  as,  for  instance,  in  Romeo  and  yuliet,  where  the  action  is 
everywhere  visibly  decided  by  an  Unseen  Power  behind,  less 
than  by  the  human  agents.  Often  things  are  within  a  very 
little  of  going  right,  when  they  are  upset  and  turned  awry. 
That  is  the  first  stage  :  visible  interference  of  Divinity,  and  ab- 
solute conclusion  of  the  action  within  the  play.  The  second 
stage  is  seen  in  Much  Ado  About  Nothing,  and  other  plays, 
where  human  purposefulness  is  more  evident,  though  not  so  as 
to  prevent  the  action  being  wound  up  within  the  play.  There 
the  Divinity  appears,  as  in  Greek  drama,  at  the  end,  adjusting 
judgment  for  an  action  with  which  it  had  more  or  less  to  do. 
But  by  the  time  we  reach  the  great  tragedies  the  scene  has  be- 
come too  involved  to  be  thus  neatly  adjusted  and  closed,  and 
the  Divinity  is  pushed  to  a  position  in  the  Beyond ;  as  in 
Hamlet,  and  esoecially  in  Othello  and  King  Lear.  If  the  play 
were  all  we  sho'-tld  have  to  take  sides  with  lago  against  Desde- 
mona.  But  th<i  play  is  not  all ;  it  shapes  for  something  Be- 
yond, and  we  £^re  purged  and  exalted  by  the  outlook,  assured 
that  in  the  hands  of  that  Divinity  all  will  be  well.  Here  is 
authentic  prophecyof  eternal  things.  (•«  Shakespeare  :  A  Study," 
by  Darrell  Figgis,  19 12.) 


20  THE   PROPHETIC   VISION 

Bible,  adding,  *'  of  dogmatism  he  is  free — of  the 
true  spirit  of  religion  he  is  full."  As  Goethe 
said,  while  we  cannot  put  our  finger  on  the  word 
of  the  solution,  he  does  seem  to  solve  all  our 
riddles  and  fulfill  all  the  dreams  we  have  ever 
had  about  the  destiny  of  man.  Read  any  of  the 
great  tragedies  and  testify  if  the  final  impression 
be  not  a  mood  of  chastened  wonder,  of  serene 
confidence,  of  death-defying  hope.  Here,  of  a 
truth,  is  deep  and  wise  insight : 

"  Such  incense  as  of  right  belongs 
To  the  true  shrine, 
Where  stands  the  Healer  of  all  wrongs 
In  light  divine." 

But  our  chief  concern  here  is  with  the  prophets, 
who  are  the  real  leaders  and  lawgivers  of  human- 
ity— those  winged  minds  who,  by  their  longer 
flights,  hft  their  fellows  out  of  the  low  vales  of 
doubt  and  fear  to  larger  outlooks.  They  influ- 
ence the  race  profoundly,  genetically,  creatively, 
touching  it  as  with  a  wand  to  finer  issues  and 
nobler  endeavour.  They  admit  us  to  a  commun- 
ion of  vision  and  a  fellowship  of  the  truth,  mak- 
ing us  sure  of  God,  sure  of  the  moral  order,  and 
surer  of  "  that  newer  fashion  yet  of  immortality," 
which  flashes  in  all  their  visions.  Our  highest 
life,  to  be  of  worth,  must  be  thus  related  to  real- 
ity ;  and  if  the  human  soul  is  untrustworthy  in 
its  loftiest  hours,  all  the   music  of  life  falls  to  a 


WHAT   PROPHETS  SEE  21 

lower  octave,  and  faith  and  hope  alike  decline. 
Either  what  the  prophets  see  is  there,  or  they 
are  the  dupes  of  splendid,  but  none  the  less  pa- 
thetic, dreams.  So,  without  further  preliminary, 
let  us  proceed  to  our  inquiry — taking  the  ques- 
tions in  reverse  order. 


II 

IS  IT  THERE  ? 

ITH  these  shining  names  before  us  we 
hardly  dare  ask :  If  what  the  poet  and 
the  prophet  see  is  not  there,  what  do 
they  make  it  out  of?  It  impHes  that,  so  far  from 
reaching  the  highest  truth,  the  insight  of  genius 
and  the  vision  of  the  saints  are  as  futile  as  the 
flicker  of  a  firefly  in  the  night,  and  that  all  faiths 
are  only  Guesses  at  the  Riddle  Existetice.  Such 
seems  to  have  been  the  position  of  Goldwin 
Smith  in  his  later  years,  though  he  recalled  ten- 
derly and  gratefully  the  beauty  and  nobility  with 
which  faith,  in  all  elevating  and  benign  religions, 
had  dignified  and  embellished  the  life  of  man. 

Here  agnosticism  becomes  pensive,  grave,  and 
sad.  It  ponders  regretfully  over  the  fact  that  the 
visions  of  poets  and  mystics  are  only  delicate  net- 
works of  dream,  woven  of  the  sweetest  things  in 
human  thought  and  aspiration — wistful  outlooks 
of  spiritual  longing ;  shapes  of  our  high  desires 
projected  by  the  soul  into  its  sky :  as  travellers  in 
the  Hartz,  ascending  the  Brocken,  are  in  certain 
atmospheres  startled  by  the  apparition  of  a  shad- 
owy figure — a  giant  image  of  themselves,  thrown 
on  the  horizon  by  the  dawn.  Some  gentle  soul 
muses  until,  in  a  fevered  mood,  the  fire  of  imagi- 

22 


IS  IT  THERE?  23 

nation  burns,  and  there  is  a  light  kindled  of  the 
fusing  of  the  powers  into  an  ecstasy.  Then  fol- 
lows the  regret,  paralyzing  enough,  that  it  is  only 
a  flickering  human  flame  after  all,  and  that  we 
are  left  in  the  dark.  One  has  a  right  to  be  sad 
at  the  thought  that  our  highest  and  purest  vi- 
sions come  to  naught,  and  that  the  longest  pil- 
grimage of  the  soul  sends  it  back  baffled  and 
empty-handed.  Surely,  if  we  are  defeated  here, 
few  other  battles  are  worth  the  winning. 

To  George  Eliot,  after  her  maturity,  Christian- 
ity was  a  thing  of  ineffable  loveliness,  but  only  a 
fable — a  tale  told  by  dreamers,  full  of  beauty  and 
pity,  but  signifying  only  the  vain  hope  of  man. 
Nor  is  it  a  matter  of  doubt  that  "  the  vacuum  at 
the  heart  of  her  faith,"  as  a  most  sympathetic 
friend   and  critic  has  described  it,'   marred  her 

"'  ^  '•  Nineteenth  Century  Teachers,"  by  Juha  Wedgwood  ( 1909). 
Nor  does  this  in  any  way  belittle  the  stately,  grave,  and  beauti- 
ful genius  of  George  Eliot.  As  Watts-Dunton  has  said,  she 
was  the  only  imaginative  writer  of  her  time  who  saw  life 
through  the  lens  of  the  new  cosmogony,  and  fearlessly  told 
what  she  saw ;  and  her  place  in  English  literature  is  secure. 
Besides,  in  her  delineations  of  character,  in  her  profound  div- 
ings into  "  the  abysmal  depths  of  Personality,"  such  as  resulted 
in  portraits  like  those  of  Donnithorne,  Dinah  Morris,  Romola, 
Maggie  Tulliver,  Tessa,  she  displayed  her  strength  of  hand — a 
strength  which  only  the  great  masters  display.  While  in  the 
painting  of  Bulstrode,  in  "  Middlemarch,"  she  entered  into 
worthy  competition  with  those  few  masters  of  tragedy  who  have 
ventured  to  use  passive  murder  as  the  tragic  mischief  of  drama. 
(Introduction  to  "  Silas  Marner,"  by  Theodore  Watts-Dunton.) 


24  THE  PROPHETIC  VISION 

outlook  upon  life,  and  especially  her  portrayal  of 
human  love ;  for  if  the  hfe  of  man  be  a  thing 
apart  from  the  highest  reality,  love  is  wingless. 
When  love  looks  downward,  whether  for  good  or 
evil,  her  power  is  high  and  sure,  though  not  so 
sure,  perhaps,  as  in  what  Watts-Dunton  called 
her  probings  into  the  deep  sophisms  by  which 
the  soul  of  man  shelters  itself  from  the  assaults  of 
conscience.  But  when  it  looks  upward,  with  few 
exceptions  her  power  ebbs,  and  sometimes  seems 
to  depart.  Mark,  too,  how  her  idealists  fail,  not 
in  combat  with  dragons,  but  amidst  the  triviali- 
ties and  mishaps  of  every  day.  Her  knights  of 
holy  causes  do  not  fall  by  the  thrust  of  a  spear ; 
they  break  their  necks  by  the  stumbling  of  a 
horse.  Even  Savonarola,  in  "  Romola,"  failed, 
self-deceived  by  that  **  shadowy  region  where  hu- 
man souls  seek  wisdom  apart  from  the  human 
sympathies  which  are  the  very  life  and  substance 
of  our  wisdom."  As  a  result,  the  Black  Friar, 
whose  protrait  should  have  been  the  focus  of  her 
artistic  power,  is  dim  and  almost  lifeless  ;  but  even 
he  is  more  vivid  and  rememberable  than  the  im- 
possibly ideal  hero  of  "  Daniel  Deronda."  There 
is  here  no  desire  to  use  George  Eliot  to  point  a 
moral  or  adorn  a  tale,  but  the  inference  from  her 
life  is  obvious  and  impressive ;  all  the  more  so 
when  we  recall  her  assurance  of  the  trustworthi- 
ness of  the  moral  instincts.  Despite  her  loss  of 
faith,  perhaps  because  of  it,  she  was  attractive  to 


IS  IT  THERE?  25 

the  men  of  the  Hamlet  age  in  which  her  lot  was 
cast,  as  she  must  always  be  even  to  those  who 
detect  the  vacuum  in  her  faith.  When,  in  "  The 
Lifted  Veil,"  she  holds  that  the  uncertainties  of 
faith  are  a  part  of  our  moral  discipline,  her  in- 
sight is  sound ;  but  we  need  not  therefore  doubt 
the  vision  of  those  who  behold  what  is  dark  to 
us. 

As  a  fact,  nothing  is  more  certain  from  a  study 
of  the  lives  of  the  prophets  than  that  they  do  not 
make  their  visions,  but  are  made  by  them. 
When  we  see  effects,  similar  to  those  ordinarily 
produced  by  habits,  springing  from  a  single  ra- 
diant hour,  a  solitary  text,  or  a  sermon  aglow 
with  white  light,  and  continuing  through  long 
years,  amidst  trials  by  land  and  by  sea,  against 
odds  unreckonable  and  obstacles  the  most  for- 
midable, we  seem  to  hear  the  sound  that  bloweth 
where  He  listeth.  Often  this  wonder  is  wrought 
amid  dazzling  light ;  sometimes  in  awe,  solitude 
and  quiet ;  but  from  it,  as  from  some  hidden 
source  unguessed  before,  issue  rare  powers  of  in- 
sight, action,  and  endurance.  From  timid,  care- 
less, or  even  wayward  men  they  are  changed  into 
champions  of  truth  and  right,  rebukers  of  kings, 
and  justifiers  of  the  ways  of  God  to  man.  As 
certain  trees  of  the  wood  with  tremulous  leaf  an- 
nounce the  coming  breeze  before  others  give  sign 
of  movement,  so  these  prophetic  souls  are  pre- 
sentient  of  events  far  distant,  and  of  the  remote 


26  THE  PROPHETIC  VISION 

triumph  of  justice.  They  do  not  make  their  rev- 
elations ;  they  are  seers  of  the  divine  in  history 
who,  while  divining  the  trend  of  the  curve  of 
destiny,  interpret  the  dumb  indignations  and 
vague  forebodings  in  the  general  conscience.* 
Or  they  are  mystics,  whose  crowning  grace  is  a 
gentle  and  solitary  air  that  seems  too  mild  to  give 
forth  such  vivifying  energy,  but  whose  hves  mark 
new  dates.  These  have  an  inward  stillness  which 
makes  them  victors  in  any  plight,  since  they  can 
at  any  time  return  to  their  quiet  or,  better  still, 
abide  in  their  quiet  through  the  tumult  of  war. 
Withal,  they  have  a  strange  strength  both  to  do 
and  to  bear,  and  joy  and  peace  rise  from  their 
hearts  like  fragrance  from  a  rose,  like  music  from 
running  water. 

When,  therefore,  a  glib  rationalism  implies,  if 
indeed  it  does  not  assert,  that  all  this  is  moon- 
shine, it  is  permitted  us  to  ask  what  better  seeds 
have  been  opened  by  its  bright  and  sunny  logic  ? 
It  can  inspire  self-culture,  but  not  self-sacrifice, 
and  as  such  it  can  never  purify  the  mixed  heart 
of  man  and  move  it  to  high,  heroic  endeavour. 
About  all  it  can  do,  apart  from  balancing  prob- 
abilities, is  to  produce  dainty  minor  poetry, 
which  is  but  mingled  query  and  protest,  and  at- 
tempt to  satisfy  the  longing  for  the  eternal  in 
a   sad   joy  in  the  things  which   are  ephemeral. 

1"  Bases   of    Religious   Belief,"  by  C.  M.  Tyler,  Chap.  V 
(1897). 


IS  IT  THERE?  27 

Marcus  Aurelius  was  a  saint  of  rationalism — a 
lonely,  lofty,  lovely  soul,  pure  and  piteous,  but 
pensive  and  forlorn  of  heart.  The  power  that 
rejuvenated  the  world  came  not  from  his  "  pale 
stream  of  philosophic  pity,"  but  from  the  Man- 
ger and  Cross  of  One  whose  followers  sang 
hymns  in  the  catacombs,  over  which  the  chariot 
of  AureHus  rumbled.  If,  according  to  that  same 
rationahsm,  every  effect  must  have  an  adequate 
cause,  is  it  not  akin  to  the  absurd  to  intimate 
that  the  force — a  burning  and  shining  force  it 
was,  though  housed  in  a  frail  little  man — that 
planted  Christianity  in  Europe,  and  altered  the 
map  of  the  world,  came  of  a  fit  of  fanaticism  on 
the  Damascus  road  ?  Enthusiasm  there  was — a 
Winding  light  and  a  melting  voice — but  when  we 
recall  that  scene,  and  others  of  like  kind,  some- 
how the  words  of  Henry  More,  the  Cambridge 
Platonist,  come  to  mind.  In  a  remarkable  dis- 
course on  Enthusiasm,  he  said : 

"The  devotional  enthusiasm  of  holy  and 
sincere  souls  has  not  at  all  been  taxed  in  all  this 
discourse.  There  has  not  one  word,  all  this 
time,  been  spoken  against  that  true  and  war- 
rantable enthusiasm  of  devout  and  holy  souls, 
who  are  so  strongly  transported  in  that  vehe- 
ment love  they  bear  towards  God,  and  that  inex- 
haustible joy  and  peace  they  find  in  Him.  For 
they  are  modest  enough  and  sober  in  all  this, 
they  witnessing  no  other  thing  to  the  world  than 


28  THE   PROPHETIC  VISION 

what  others  may  experience  in  themselves,  and 
what  is  plainly  set  down  in  Holy  Scriptures, 
that  the  kingdom  of  God  is  righteousness,  and 
peace,  and  joy  in  the  Holy  Ghost — to  such 
enthusiasm  as  this,  which  is  but  the  triumph  of 
the  soul  of  man  inebriated,  as  it  were,  with  that 
delicious  sense  of  the  divine  life,  I  must  declare 
myself  as  much  a  friend  as  I  am  to  the  vulgar, 
fanatical  enthusiasm  a  profound  enemy." 

If  it  be  said  that  this  lofty  and  calm  certainty 
is  merely  a  feeling,  the  evanescent  dream  of  rapt 
and  solitary  thinkers,  there  is  the  strange  fact 
that  the  dream  has  come  regularly  to  all  sorts 
and  conditions  of  men  in  all  ages,  and  that  the 
dreamers  have  been,  for  the  most  part,  gifted 
with  the  m.ost  subtle  and  searching  intellects. 
With  a  great  cost  obtained  they  this  citizenship 
in  the  kingdom  of  vision,  as  we  learn  from  the 
story  of  their  heroic  and  dedicated  lives,  to  read 
which  is  to  recall  the  words  of  Conington, 
uttered  just  before  he  passed  away :  "  Now  is 
the  vision  complete — this  is  how  they  see  in 
heaven." 


Ill 

EYES  THAT  SEE  NOT 

OF  like  kind  also  is  the  second  question  : 
If  what  the  poets  and  prophets  see  is 
there,  why  do  not  all  see  it  ?  As  a  dis- 
closure of  the  low  level  of  religious  experience 
this  is  melancholy  enough,  but  in  so  far  as  it  is 
used  to  discredit  the  highest  life  of  the  spirit  it  is 
futile.  All  the  highest  achievements  of  man 
may  be  discredited  by  the  same  arrogant  and 
blind  judgment.  No  doubt  the  majority  prefer 
ragtime  music  to  the  sonatas  of  Beethoven,  but 
that  does  not  invalidate  the  vision  of  the  su- 
preme musician.  When  Darwin,  as  he  con- 
fessed, lost  his  interest  in  Shakespeare,  by 
reason  of  too  much  grinding  at  physical  facts,  he 
did  not  thereupon  conclude  that  Shakespeare  is 
a  valueless  book.  As  a  wise  and  frank  man  he 
admitted  the  atrophy  of  his  artistic  sense  as  a 
defect  to  be  regretted,  a  penalty  of  specialism, 
which  assuredly  was  too  costly  a  price  to  pay. 

If  we  do  not  appreciate  great  music,  we  may 
honestly  admit  the  fact ;  but  we  need  not  do  so 
with  complacency,  or  with  conscious  superiority. 
Such  a  confession,  however  honest,  is  no  occa- 
sion for  vanity.     Instead,  the  fact  that  music  is 

29 


30  THE  PROPHETIC  VISION 

loved  and  enjoyed  by  so  many  fine  minds  ought 
to  be  evidence  to  a  reflective  mind  that  there  is 
a  whole  world  of  beauty  from  which,  for  some 
reason,  he  is  shut  out.  By  the  same  token,  the 
experience  of  power  and  joy,  healing  comfort 
and  victorious  Hving,  derived  by  so  many  from 
communion  with  God — extending  over  all  ages, 
among  all  peoples,  and  in  all  rehgions — ought  to 
induce  in  any  man,  not  smitten  with  irredeem- 
able vanity,  a  sense  of  wonder,  if  not  of  regret, 
that  he  knows  too  little  of  what  it  all  means. 
Instead  of  regarding  the  saints  as  celestially 
entranced  dreamers,  and  the  prophets  as  pilgrims 
of  a  visionary  realm,  he  may  well  be  urged  to 
aspire  to  some  glimpse,  however  dim,  of  their 
all-conquering  vision.  All  men  are  aware, 
vaguely  though  it  may  be,  of  a  serene  and  upper 
world  whence  come  airs  and  floating  echoes 
which  "  convey  a  melancholy  into  all  our  day  "  • 
and  surely  we  should  be  willing  to  listen  to  those 
who  explore  that  enchanted  land,  though  they 
speak,  as  they  must  often  speak,  in  language 
cryptic  and  symbolic. 

Of  course,  there  are  in  this  sphere,  as  every- 
where else,  Gradgrinds  and  Peter  Bells.  Dickens 
has  etched  Gradgrind  in  "  Hard  Times  " — perhaps 
because  to  such  a  man  life  must  be  a  hard  time 
— and  we  know  the  lot  of  that  unfortunate  little 
Gradgrind  who  was  so  often  forbidden  to  wonder. 
But  Peter  Bell,  in  the  Wordsworth  poem,  stands 


EYES  THAT  SEE  NOT  3 1 

as  an  ideal  of  the  prosaic,  visionless  man  in  a 
world  full  of  poetry.     Of  him  we  read : 

'*  A  primrose  by  the  river's  brim 
A  yellow  primrose  was  to  him, 
And  it  was  nothing  more." 

Why  was  not  Peter  Bell  right  ?  What  more  did 
the  poet  see  in  the  flower  ?  If  we  were  poets  we 
should  be  the  better  able  to  say;  but  for  one 
thing,  the  poet  must  have  seen  that  the  primrose 
did  not  stand  by  itself,  but  was  an  expression  of 
the  heart  of  nature,  and  that  the  universal  life 
bloomed  in  it.  It  may  have  been  a  symbol  to 
him  of  we  know  not  what  gracious  and  graceful 
things,  something  akin  to  himself,  only  far  more 
simple  and  pure.  At  any  rate,  all  this,  or  nearly 
all,  was  as  real  as  what  Peter  Bell  saw,  and  far 
more  beautiful.  To  Peter  Bell  a  flower  bed  would 
have  meant  only  so  many  plants,  and  nothing 
more ;  while  to  Tennyson  a  single  flower  in  a 
crannied  wall  brought  near  the  awful  mystery  of 
God  and  man,  suggesting  the  indefinable  and 
haunting  beauty  which  hallows  the  earth  and 
transforms  it  from  a  lumber-yard  into  a  temple. 
Nor  does  the  horn-eyed  stupidity  of  Peter  Bell 
render  invalid  the  authentic  and  revealing  vision 
of  the  poet. 

Space  does  not  permit  an  inquiry,  profitable 
though  it  might  be,  into  the  clouds  which  befog 
spiritual  insight.    How  far  physical  states  mar  the 


32  THE   PROPHETIC   VISION 

vision  of  the  soul ;  in  what  ways  sundry  miscon- 
ceptions of  religion  interfere ;  why  so  man}^  fail  for 
that  they  do  not  fulfill  the  conditions  of  faith  ;  the 
inevitable  limitations  and  fluctuations  of  our  nature 
— these  and  kindred  questions  would  take  us  far 
afield.'  The  wonder  is  not  that  men  have  mis- 
givings, but  that  they  have  any  faith  at  all,  so 
little  care  do  they  take  to  keep  alive  in  them- 
selves those  experiences  out  of  which  faith  grows, 
and  without  which  it  is  so  easily  and  so  often  im- 
perilled by  doubt.  As  in  the  Holman  Hunt 
painting,  TJie  Light  of  the  World,  when  the  Liv- 
ing Truth  knocks  at  our  doors,  weeds  are  there, 
the  cumber  of  neglect,  and  the  accumulated 
hindrances  of  sloth.  If  a  musician  who  wished 
to  know  Beethoven  studied  him  as  little  as  we 
study  the  masters  of  the  spiritual  life,  he  would 
never  touch  the  hem  of  that  singing  robe.  One 
does  not  find  in  the  early  days  of  Phillips  Brooks 
the  same  mighty  faith  that  swayed  his  later 
years,  when  it  seemed  that  Christ  lived  in  him, 
moving  in  dignity,  pathos,  and  beauty.  That 
faith  came  slowly,  amid  sorrows  and  trials  like 
our  own,  with  temptations  and  misgivings.  But 
the  great  assurance  came  at  length,  and  he  knew 
what  he  was  talking  about  when  he  spoke  of  God 
and  the  soul,  and  their  eternal  life  together ;  he 
knew  the  deep  things  and  the  strange  paths  and 

* "  The  Seeming  Unreality  of  the  Spiritual  Life,"  by  H.  C. 
King  (1908). 


EYES  THAT  SEE  NOT  33 

the  floods  of  great  waters.  No;  it  is  not  the 
absence  of  reahty  that  underhes  the  doubts  of 
men,  but  the  absence  of  that  venture  of  faith, 
that  culture  of  the  soul,  which  makes  the  reality 
vivid  and  persuasive. 

What  a  fund  of  instruction  and  inspiration 
there  is  for  us  in  the  lives  of  the  saints — or  in  the 
Letters  of  Fenelon  and  Francis  de  Sales,  to  name 
two  manuals  of  the  spiritual  life — yet  how  little 
use  we  make  of  it.  Too  often  we  regard  the 
saints  as  eccentric  psychics,  or  else  think  of  them 
after  the  manner  of  Cotter  Morison  who,  in  "  The 
Service  of  Man,"  admitted  that  saintliness  is  the 
one  marvel  of  this  mortal  world,  but  held  it  to  be 
a  distant  and  inaccessible  glory  baffling  us  by  a 
beauty  impossible  of  attainment.  The  saints  are 
indeed  men  and  women  of  genius,  whose  lives, 
marked  by  experiences  of  splendour  and  terror, 
fill  us  with  wonder  and  awe.  Not  more  so,  how- 
ever, than  the  great  poets,  who  set  to  music  those 
dim  dreams,  those  vague  yearnings,  which  well 
up  in  every  human  heart,  but  which  so  few  can 
ever  express.  And  the  very  fact  that  they  find 
response  in  us,  though  it  be  only  a  sweet  sadness 
of  wistful  longing,  shows  that  they  do  but  lay 
hold  upon  forces  common  to  us  all,  and  walk  at 
high  levels  the  same  path  which  we  may  follow 
in  the  valley.  Where  the  saints  have  genius,  we 
have  each  a  little  buried  talent,  some  greater, 
some  less ;  and  while  we  may  not  follow  their  grand 


34  THE   PROPHETIC  VISION 

stride  along  the  Mystic  Way,  the  path  to  a  more 
vivid  insight,  and  a  more  joyous  reaUzation,  is 
assuredly  open  to  us. 

"  We  are,  then,  one  and  all  the  kindred  of  the 
mystics ;  and  it  is  by  dwelling  upon  this  kinship, 
by  interpreting — so  far  as  we  may — their  great 
declarations,  in  the  light  of  our  own  little  experi- 
ence, that  we  shall  learn  to  understand  them  best. 
Strange  and  far  away  though  they  seem,  they  are 
not  cut  off  from  us  by  some  impassable  abyss. 
They  belong  to  us.  They  are  our  brethren ;  the 
giants,  the  heroes  of  our  race.  As  the  achieve- 
ment of  genius  belongs  not  to  itself  only,  but 
also  to  the  society  that  brought  it  forth  ;  as  the- 
ology declares  that  the  merits  of  the  saints  avail 
for  all ;  so,  because  of  the  solidarity  of  the  hu- 
man family,  the  supernal  accomplishment  of  the 
mystics  is  ours  also.  To  be  a  mystic  is  simply 
to  participate  here  and  now  in  that  real  and 
eternal  life  ;  in  the  fullest,  deepest  sense  which  is 
possible  to  man.  It  is  to  share,  as  a  free  and 
conscious  agent — not  a  servant,  but  as  a  son — in 
the  joyous  travail  of  the  universe  :  its  mighty  on- 
ward sweep  through  pain  and  glory  towards  its 
home  in  God."  ^ 

1 "  Mysticism,"  by  Evelyn  Underbill,  p.  534  (1911).  This  noble 
book  does  what  has  long  needed  to  be  done — it  sifts  and  digests 
the  whole  literature  of  Christian  mysticism  with  sympathy, 
discrimination,  and  sanity  ;  and  the  witness  of  that  shining 
tradition  to  the  reality  of  unseen  things  is  as  impressive  as  its 


EYES   THAT  SEE  NOT  35 

To  be  sure,  the  ordinary  sensualist  cares  for 
none  of  these  things ;  he  eats  and  drinks,  for  to- 
morrow he  will  die ;  he  has  not  reached  the  level 
of  serious  concern  about  ultimate  reality.  With 
such  it  is  hard  to  reason ;  they  must  be  left  to 
the  tragedies  of  life  in  which  even  the  most 
careless  and  frivolous  are  involved.  But  there 
is  a  host  who  really  yearn  for  a  higher  and  truer 
life,  some  of  whom  are  always  seeking  without 
finding,  and  all  of  whom  live  in  shadows  and  in 
shallows,  far  below  their  privilege  and  duty.  We 
are  all  inspired,  said  Fenelon,  but  our  mode  of 
life  stifles  it ;  and  the  strange  thing  is  that  we 
think  our  mode  of  hfe  of  more  value  than  the 
vision.  We  hear  afar  the  murmur  of  those  voices 
which  would  tell  us  the  meaning  of  life,  but  rarely 
do  we  shape  them  into  mortal  speech — and  thus 
we  die,  with  the  sweetest  song  within  us  left  un- 
sung. 

disclosure  of  the  methods  of  the  spiritual  life  is  practical  and 
vitally  suggestive.  The  author  finds  in  the  mystic  experience 
the  key  to  all  the  higher  life  of  man,  whether  it  be  that  of  the 
artist  or  musician,  striving  to  catch  and  fix  some  aspect  of  light 
or  melody,  or  of  the  man  of  science,  purging  his  intellect  that 
he  may  look  upon  the  secrets  of  life  with  innocent  eye.  The 
appendix,  giving  a  historical  sketch  of  European  mysticism  from 
the  beginning  of  the  Christian  era  to  the  death  of  Blake,  is  a 
roll-call  of  names  that  shine  like  stars  to  light  a  heavenly  path- 
way. 


IV 
THE  BASIS  OF  FAITH 

AT  last  we  may  at  least  approach  the  real 
question  before  us  :  Is  what  the  poet,  the 
seer,  the  prophet  see  there  ?  And  on 
the  very  threshold  we  are  met  with  a  flat  denial 
of  the  possibility  in  man  of  spiritual  insight,  or 
of  any  knowledge  of  reality  at  all.  Such  a  de- 
nial, of  course,  is  not  new,  and  it  is  less  radical 
and  thoroughgoing  in  our  day  than  it  was  in 
earlier  times  when  men  dared  to  go  to  the  length 
of  their  logic.  Nor  is  it  altogether  an  evil,  but 
may  conceivably  be  needful  as  a  prod  to  the  ad- 
vance of  thought  and  the  broadening  of  faith,  as 
the  criticism  of  the  sophists  opened  the  door  to 
Socrates,  as  a  barren  deism  prepared  the  way 
for  Methodism,  which  "  fell  on  the  dry  heart  like 
rain."  Had  it  not  been  for  the  negation  of 
Hume,  there  would  have  been  no  opportunity 
for  the  fruitful  philosophic  recovery  which  we 
owe  to  Germany.  Never,  it  would  seem,  does 
the  new  and  deeper  emotion  shed  its  fertilizing 
waters  to  any  renewing  purpose  until  the  east 
wind  of  doubt  has  swept  over  the  soul. 

Hence    the   recurrent   world-phenomenon    of 

36 


THE  BASIS  OF  FAITH  37 

doubt  in  our  day,  when,  as  Clough  said, "  it 
seems  His  newer  will  we  should  not  think  of 
Him  at  all,"  unless  we  can  arrive  at  some  pro- 
founder  insight.  The  older  thought  which  it 
questions  and  criticizes  may  seem  to  go  down 
utterly,  but  it 

**  Decomposes  but  to  recompose, 
Becomes  my  universe  that  thinks  and  knows." 

How  confidently  the  old  denial  is  now  put  forth, 
with  what  irony  and  disdain,  may  be  heard  on  all 
sides,  though  it  has  lost  much  of  its  former  au- 
dacity. After  this  fashion  it  tosses  the  spiritual 
world  aside  as  not  only  unknowable,  but  indeed 
quite  useless : 

"  The  universe  upon  this  view  (whether  it 
understands  itself  or  not)  falls  apart  into  two 
regions ;  we  may  call  them  two  hemispheres. 
We  have  on  one  side  phenomena;  in  other 
words,  things  as  they  are  to  us,  and  ourselves  so 
far  as  we  are  anything  to  ourselves ;  while  on  the 
other  side  are  things  as  they  are  in  themselves 
and  as  they  do  not  appear ;  or,  if  we  please,  we 
may  call  this  side  the  Unknowable.  Our  atti- 
tude towards  such  a  divided  universe  varies  a 
good  deal.  We  may  be  thankful  to  be  rid  of 
that  which  is  not  relative  to  our  affairs,  and 
which  cannot  in  any  way  concern  us ;  and  we 
may  be  glad  that  the  worthless  is  thrown  over 
the  wall.     Or  we  may  regret  that  reality  is  too 


38  THE   PROPHETIC  VISION 

good  to  be  known,  and  from  the  midst  of  our 
confusion  may  revere  the  other  side  of  its  inac- 
cessible grandeur.  We  may  even  naively  feUci- 
tate  ourselves  on  total  estrangement,  and  rejoice 
that  at  last  utter  ignorance  has  removed  every 
scruple  which  impeded  religion.  Where  we 
know  nothing  we  can  have  no  possible  objection 
to  worship."  * 

While  this  statement  is  somewhat  extreme,  for 
sake  of  emphasis,  it  exhibits  all  the  more  vividly 
the  basic  contention  of  agnosticism ;  which  is, 
that  we  can  know  only  the  shimmering  appear- 
ances of  reality  as  reported  by  the  senses,  behind 
which  "  things  in  themselves  "  lurk  beyond  our 
ken.  It  may  be  admitted  that  these  recurrent 
waves  of  scepticism  are  caused  by  the  failure  of 

' "  Appearance  and  Reality,"  by  F.  H.  Bradley,  Second 
Edition  (1903).  Those  who  wish  to  follow  the  various  aspects 
of  agnosticism,  which  takes  almost  as  many  shapes  as  Social- 
ism, may  find  them  duly  set  forth  and  examined  in  an  essay  by 
the  late  Prof.  Robert  Flint,  entitled  Ag7tosticis7n  (1903). 
It  is  not  the  province  of  this  essay  to  follow  the  difficult  mazes 
of  epistemological  criticism,  and  indeed  there  is  little  need  to 
do  so  after  the  work  of  Dr.  James  Ward  in  his  lectures  on 
«'  Naturalism  and  Agnosticism  "  (1899).  As  a  philosophy,  ag- 
nosticism is  simply  intellectual  bankruptcy,  and  therefore  at 
odds  with  "  right  reason  " ;  but  as  a  fact  it  is  more  often  only 
a  mood  of  spiritual  adversity,  useful  in  preparing  the  way  for  a 
restatement  of  theology  ;  though  sometimes  it  is  only  a  labour- 
saving  device  to  escape  the  toil  of  thought.  In  any  case,  it  is 
a  house  built  upon  the  sand,  unable  to  endure  ordinary  weather, 
much  less  a  Pentecost  with  its  rushing  mighty  winds. 


THE  BASIS  OF  FAITH  39 

theology  to  express  the  common  spiritual  ex- 
perience, and  as  such  are  not  without  value. 
Whether  this  be  true  or  not,  we  have  here  a 
definite  dogma  which  closes  the  doors  upon  those 
dark  ways  of  thought  in  which  the  fact  that  we 
are  men  and  not  animals  mysteriously  compels 
us  to  tread ;  and  it  closes  more  doors  than  one. 
Despite  the  repeated  warning  of  Mr.  Balfour,  * 
which  seems  not  to  have  been  heeded,  the  agnos- 
tic thus  renders  not  only  religion,  but  all  science 
of  every  kind,  illegitimate  and  illusory.  Less 
consistent  and  ingenuous  than  the  agnostic  of 
old,  he  endeavours  to  pass  off  his  dogmatic  nega- 
tive inferences  as,  forsooth,  scientific ;  whereas, 
in  the  parlance  of  the  countryside,  he  is  all  the 
while  sawing  off  the  limb  on  which  he  is  perched. 
Though  he  may  wish,  for  this  reason,  to  grant 
immunity  to  science,  it  is  of  no  avail.  Having 
doomed  religion  to  hopeless  ignorance,  he  must, 
by  the  same  logic,  honestly  applied,  send  science 
to  the  same  limbo  ;  for,  if  we  cannot  know  reality, 
the  man  of  science  can  only  busy  himself  in  ar- 
ranging, systematically,  a  series  of  kaleidoscopic 
appearances,  which  may  be,  for  aught  he  knows, 
elusive  and  lying  dreams.  To  such  lengths  does 
this  dogma  go,  carrying  good  men  with  it,  and 
involving  all  at  last  in  absurdity. 

But  why,  it  may  fairly  be  asked,  attach  to  ap- 
pearances the  delusive  sense  of  concealing,  rather 

1 "  The  Foundations  of  Belief,"  by  Arthur  Balfour  (1897). 


40  THE   PROPHETIC  VISION 

than  the  honest  sense  of  revealing,  reality  ?  How 
did  these  men  learn,  and  by  what  reason  do  they 
infer,  that  reality  has  a  habit  of  wearing  masks 
with  intent  to  deceive  ?  Does  not  the  very  idea 
of  appearance,  in  order  to  be  intelligible,  imply, 
as  Lotze  pointed  out,  not  only  a  being  or  thing 
which  appears,  but  also,  and  quite  as  indispen- 
sably, a  second  being  by  whom  the  appearance 
is  perceived  ?  Do  we  not  in  all  cognitive  expe- 
rience, whether  sensuous  or  intellectual,  come 
into  immediate  contact  with  objective  reality,  of 
the  existence  of  which  we  have  in  experience  an 
irrefutable  witness  ?  *  Why  should  appearances 
not  be  reality  ?  Nay,  what  else  can  they  be,  un- 
less, after  all,  nothing  really  appears,  and  we  are 
spectators  of  an  empty  show?  How  can  reality 
appear,  shine  forth,  and  yet  remain  unknown  and 
uncapturable  by  those  to  whom  it  appears?  How 
do  we  know  that  it  is  an  appearance  of  reality, 
and  if  we  can  recognize  the  appearance  of  reality, 
why  can  we  not  know  reality  itself?  Or,  must 
man  stare  at  the  universe  in  dumb  and  perpetual 
bewilderment,  as  at  a  book  of  hieroglyphics  the 
lexicon  of  which  has  not  been  found  ?  Is  not 
the  very  statement  of  such  a  thesis  its  sufficient 
and  final  answer,  requiring  no  argument  to  refute 
its  failure  ? 

It    need   hardly   be   said    that   this    question, 

^  "  The    Presentation   of    Reality,"    by   Helen   Wodehouse 
(1910). 


THE  BASIS   OF  FAITH  4I 

raised  by  Kant,  has  been  answered  since  his  day ; 
but  it  is  worth  while  to  point  out  the  path 
whereby  man  finds  his  way  to  reahty,  both  seen 
and  unseen.  The  poet  sees,  or  thinks  he  sees,  a 
spirit  of  beauty  in  nature,  and  communes  with 
the  invisible  Artist  revealed  there ;  but  he  is  pow- 
erless to  prove  his  vision  because  he  does  not  see 
the  flower  or  the  sunset  from  the  inside.  There 
may  be  spirit  in  all  things — in  the  flower  spirit 
dreaming,  and  in  the  animal  spirit  waking — but 
the  poet  could  not  convince  a  sceptic,  though  he 
might  pity  him  as  a  blind  man  in  an  art  gallery. 
While  physical  science  may  come  upon  forms  of 
matter  of  almost  ethereal  delicacy,  fine  almost  to 
spirit-fineness,  it  can  only  walk  in  the  outer  court 
of  reality.  Unless  we  have  a  key  to  the  inner 
temple  we  cannot  open,  cannot  enter, cannot  know 
what  lies  behind.  One  thing,  however,  man  does 
certainly  know  as  a  reality  from  the  inside,  and 
that  is  himself — that  he  is  a  living,  conscious, 
thinking,  loving,  hoping  spirit — and  that  is  his 
key  to  the  reality  of  the  world  in  which  he  lives. 
We  have,  thus,  in  our  own  being,  authentic  knowl- 
edge of  reality,  and  may  be  assured  that  the 
poet  is  not  "  an  idle  dreamer  of  an  empty  day," 
nor  the  saint  a  follower  of  a  wandering  marsh- 
light  in  a  bog. 

Without  this  knowledge  of  the  reality  of  our 
own  mind,  all  knowledge,  of  anything  within  the 
mind,  or   of    other    minds,  or   of   the    external 


42  THE  PROPHETIC  VISION 

world,  is  impossible,  and  intelligence  is  a  blank 
and  science  a  dream.  In  all  self-knowledge  the 
mind  faces  its  own  reality  as  both  subject  and  ob- 
ject, as  the  knower  and  the  known,  and  is  in  di- 
rect contact  with  reality.  Lotze  accounted  it 
the  strangest  of  all  feats  that  the  mind  should 
deny  its  own  existence,  at  the  behest  of  some- 
thing which  it  can  know  only  by  means  of  the 
knowledge  of  itself;  but  from  such  denial  it  is 
estopped,  if  in  no  other  way,  by  the  laws  of  its 
own  being.  To  deny  the  existence  of  mind  we 
must  first  possess  a  mind,  and  in  order  to  destroy 
the  validity  of  thought  we  must  assume  that  the 
laws  of  thought  are  valid :  must  use  reason  to 
disprove  the  truth  of  reason.  In  the  same  man- 
ner, those  who  reduce  the  mind  to  a  series  of 
flitting  images  fall  into  a  deeper  absurdity — a 
stream  of  thought  without  a  thinker,  which  is 
even  more  amazing  than  a  thinker  without 
thought.  No  ;  it  is  a  fact  that  we  have  a  mind 
and  can  think,  and  though  the  world  be  only  a 
phantasmagoria,  none  the  less  we  exist.  From 
that  fact  there  is  no  escape,  and  its  meaning,  if 
we  attend  to  it,  not  only  gives  us  a  glimpse,  but 
opens  the  way  to  the  deepest  reality. 

Long  ago  St.  Augustine  urged  this  contention, 
both  in  his  "  City  of  God  "  and  in  his  essay  on 
the   Trinity^  as  did  Descartes  in  his  famous  epi- 

^*' Yet    whoever  doubts  that  he  himself  lives,  and  remem- 
bers, and  understands,  and  wills,  and  thinks,  and  knows,  and 


THE  BASIS  OF  FAITH  43 

gram,  Cogito,  ergo  sum;  but  its  implications,  in 
view  of  the  natural  history  of  man,  have  not  been 
emphasized,  and  they  are  as  authentic  as  they 
are  profound.  If  man  be  the  child  of  nature,  as 
science  insists,  then  the  spiritual  evidence  of  his 
being  is  all  the  more  impressive,  since  there  must 
be  in  nature  not  only  life,  but  consciousness,  in- 
telligence, thought,  love,  hope — a  delicate, 
dreaming,  beauty-loving  spirit — else  she  could 
not  have  bequeathed  such  qualities  to  her  child. 
Admit  that  man  evolved  from  abysmal  depths, 
*'  mounting  through  the  spires  of  form," — through 
mud,  mist,  and  fungi,  through  long  reptilian 
aeons,  through  the  wild  war  and  play  of  the  ani- 
mal world,  "  red  in  tooth  and  claw  "  ;  follow  the 
ascent  of  life,  from  its  lowest  depths  up  the  long 
path  to  the  summit  of  heroic  achievement  and 
saintly  devotion — and  the  cumulative  disclosure 
is  simply  overwhelming.  No  wonder  Lord  Ten- 
nyson, standing  beside  the  cradle  of  a  child,  and 
seeing  as  in  a  vision  whence  that  little  life  had 
come,  and  what  it  means,  burst  into  triumphant 
song.  If  one  would  see  the  history  of  the  soul 
in  a  flash  of  white  light,  let  him  read  "  De  Pro- 
fimdisy  and  he  will  either  join  in  the  great  hal- 

judges  ?  Seeing  that  even  if  he  doubts,  he  lives :  if  he  doubts, 
he  remembers  why  he  doubts  :  if  he  doubts,  he  understands 
that  he  doubts  :  if  he  doubts,  he  wishes  to  be  certain  :  if  he 
doubts,  he  thinks  "  ("  Trinity,"  Book  X).  «« «  What  if  you  are 
deceived  ?  '  For  if  I  am  deceived,  I  am."  ("  City  of  God," 
Vol.  I,  p.  468.) 


44  THE   PROPHETIC  VISION 

leluiah  chorus  at  the  close,  wherein  faith  has 
wedded  fact,  or  sit  in  dumb  wonder  at  the  mys- 
tery of  his  own  being. 

In  the  same  way,  he  who  studies  the  moral 
Hfe  of  man  will  emerge  from  his  inquiry  with  a 
new  sense  of  "  these  awful  souls  that  dwell  in 
clay."  Men  are  distinguished  from  brutes,  as 
Coleridge  said,  chiefly  by  a  power  which  discerns 
good  and  evil,  and  even  the  most  frivolous  man 
must  be  smitten  mute  by  a  voice  speaking  within 
his  own  soul  urging  him  to  follow  a  moral  ideal. 
Like  music,  it  seems  to  deal  directly  with  the 
reality  of  which  it  speaks,'  at  once  a  prophet  and 
a  priest,  and  still  more  a  hint  of  the  origin  of  the 
soul.  The  facts  described  by  the  word  Con- 
science, which,  as  its  etymology  signifies,  means 
**  knowing  together  with,"  are  very  wonderful, 
and  they  have  a  far-reaching  meaning.  Man 
is  aware  not  only  of  an  outer  world  and  of  a 
world  within,  but  also  of  another  world  which 

1  "  The  cognitions  we  gain  through  the  ordinary  exercise  of 
the  Senses  are  perfectly  analogous,  in  their  mode  of  origin,  to 
those  which  come  to  us  through  the  moral  faculty.  In  the  act 
of  Perception  we  are  immediately  introduced  to  another  than 
ourselves  that  gives  us  what  we  feel ;  in  the  act  of  Conscience, 
we  are  immediately  introduced  to  a  Higher  than  ourselves  that 
gives  us  what  we  feel ;  the  externality  in  the  one  case,  the 
authority  in  the  other,  the  causality  in  both,  are  known  upon 
exactly  the  same  terms,  and  carry  the  same  guarantee  of  their 
validity."  (  *«  Study  of  Religion,"  by  James  Martineau,  Vol.  I, 
p.  27,  1888.) 


THE  BASIS  OF  FAITH  45 

appears  to  have  no  tangible  existence — an  Ideal 
World.  He  cannot  reduce  that  higher,  invisible 
world  to  definition,  but  it  is  so  real  in  its  power 
over  him  that,  in  comparison  with  it,  he  is  always 
condemning  the  world  in  which  he  lives.  That 
is  to  say,  he  is  able  to  conceive  of  a  world  better 
than  this  world ;  and  while  the  action  of  that  ideal 
world  is  not  felt  in  the  same  degree  by  all  men, 
traces  of  its  influence  are  at  work  in  all.  When 
a  man  complains  against  the  injustice  and  pain 
of  this  world,  he  must  have  in  mind  some  other 
world  with  which  he  compares  it,  else  he  would 
not  complain  at  all.  When  he  is  conscious  of  sin 
he  feels  himself  falling  short  of  some  ideal  of 
being  to  which,  however,  he  has  never  yet  at- 
tained. These  facts,  known  to  all  men,  make  our 
human  life  a  wonderful  mystery,  showing,  as  they 
do,  that  we  are^  linked  to  a  transcendent  realm 
which  surpasses  the  things  we  see  and  reahze. 

Whence  came  this  Moral  Ideal  which  sits  in 
judgment  upon  us,  and  will  not  let  us  rest  ?  If  it 
be  said  that  man  created  it,  we  have  still  the 
inquiry  not  only  as  to  what  he  made  it  out 
of,  but  whence  came  the  suggestion  of  it  ? 
Those  who  try  to  explain  the  moral  sense  as 
being  simply  a  deposit  of  habit,  a  legacy  of 
ancestral  fear,  or  the  persistence  of  old  dreams 
of  ghosts,  defeat  themselves.  Instead  of  explain- 
ing it,  they  are  only  tracing  its  history  from  dim 
beginnings,  leaving   its    origin   and    meaning  a 


46  THE  PROPHETIC  VISION 

mystery ;  and  the  further  back  we  push  it  the 
more  impressive  becomes  its  witness  to  the  moral 
order  which  it  proclaims.  As  Maeterlink  said  in 
his  "  Life  of  the  Bee  "  :  "  If  the  bee  is  indeed  to  be 
credited  with  none  of  the  feelings  or  ideas  which 
we  have  ascribed  to  it,  shall  we  not  very  wiUingly 
shift  the  ground  of  our  wonder  ?  If  we  must  not 
admire  the  bee,  we  will  then  admire  nature ;  the 
moment  must  always  come  when  admiration  can 
be  no  longer  denied  us,  nor  shall  there  be  loss  to 
us  through  our  having  retreated,  or  waited." 
Just  so  it  is  with  those  who  seek  to  discredit  the 
evidence  of  the  moral  sense  by  reciting  its  natural 
history,  and  its  apparent  variability  in  different 
stages  of  moral  culture.  So  far  from  weakening 
its  force,  they  make  plain  the  fact  that  the  moral 
law  is  woven  into  the  fibre  of  the  universe,  and 
the  time  comes,  as  with  the  bee,  when  we  can 
withhold  our  admiration  no  longer. 

Other  things  may  be  open  to  debate,  but  the 
moral  sense  of  man  is  so  unmistakable,  so  per- 
emptory, that  there  have  been  few  to  deny  it. 
Man  did  not  create  his  moral  world  ;  he  cannot 
destroy  it.  Nor  can  he  by  any  ruse  escape  it. 
It  is  the  law  of  the  world  written  in  his  heart, 
and  that  is  why  the  great  masters  of  tragedy, 
from  Sophocles  to  Shakespeare,  have  shown  how 
the  very  stars  fight  against  the  evil  doer.  Be- 
sides a  general  sense  of  something  better,  man  is 
aware  of  a  particular  and  persistent  obligation 


THE  BASIS  OF  FAITH  47 

that  he  ought  to  be  something  better  than  he  is. 
Debate  the  matter  how  he  will,  when  the  argument 
is  over  and  he  is  quiet,  back  comes  that  haunting 
feehng ;  and  he  has  learned  that  to  resist  that 
prompting  is  to  break  up  in  a  most  painful  way 
the  inner  unity  of  his  life.  So  exquisitely  delicate 
in  its  poise  is  the  moral  nature  of  man.  Trifled 
with,  it  is  capable  of  indefinite  stultification. 
Properly  guarded  and  obeyed,  it  gives  authentic 
tidings  of  a  life  that  is  beyond  the  stars.  For, 
when  a  man  puts  all  excuses  aside  and  asks  his 
own  soul  what  kind  of  goodness  is  required  of 
him,  the  answer  that  comes  back  is  an  amazing 
one.  He  learns  that  there  is  no  limit  to  the 
goodness  demanded — that,  in  fact,  the  moral 
sense  is  the  pressure  upon  him  of  the  Infinite, 
and  that  it  widens  out  to  an  angle  which,  if 
followed,  points  always  to  something  better, 
always  to  something  higher  up.  At  first  glance 
this  seems  discouraging,  but  when  he  reflects  that 
after  this  plan  his  life  is  ordered,  it  is  permitted 
him  to  interpret  it  as  the  will  of  the  Eternal : 

"  By  all  that  He  requires  of  me 
I  know  what  He  Himself  must  be." 

With  this  witness  of  Duty,  "  strong  daughter 
of  the  voice  of  God,"  must  be  joined  the  revela- 
tion of  human  love,  the  more  properly  so  when 
we  recall  the  great  Shakespeare  line : 

"  Conscience  is  born  of  love.  ^* 


48  THE  PROPHETIC  VISION 

Human  love  may  seem  to  begin  in  passion,  as  a 
flood  in  the  brain  and  a  fire  in  the  blood ;  but  it 
does  not  end  there.  Instead,  it  rises  from  the 
dust,  spreads  its  wings,  and  becomes  an  inspired 
sylph  prophesying  of  *'  a  Love  divine  all  love 
excelling."  More  than  an  idealization  of  the 
woman  by  the  man,  of  the  child  by  the  parent, 
of  friend  by  friend,  it  is  an  insight  into  the  awful 
beauty,  worth,  and  meaning  of  the  soul.  There 
is  the  discovery  in  the  beloved  life  of  an  ideal 
embodied,  yet  unembodied,  and  a  disclosure  to 
the  lover  of  an  ideal  within  himself,  giving  to  his 
being  exaltation,  refinement,  and  dignity.  Then 
follows  the  discovery  of  the  ideal  in  humanity, 
who  are  in  one  degree  or  another  lovers  like 
himself;  and  the  logic  of  it  is  that  the  universe  is 
the  home  of  the  Ideal — that  somewhere,  every- 
where, a  soul  of  Love  lives  in  it.  When  we  ask 
the  genesis  of  all  the  love  that  softens,  sanctifies 
and  glorifies  the  life  of  man,  that  spirit  which, 
one  with  the  human  spirit  where  it  dwells,  bears 
authentic  witness  of  an  Eternal  Love  whence  all 
human  love  comes,  and  whither,  at  last,  it  re- 
turns. 

Consider  what  this  means — the  transfiguration 
of  Hfe  into  a  scene  grand  beyond  all  power  of 
poet-thinking  to  conceive ;  delicate  beyond  all 
human  tenderness  ;  lovely  beyond  all  human 
dream.  It  suggests  that  we  are  in  the  hands  of 
One  who  is  ever  uttering  Himself  in  the  profu- 


THE  BASIS  OF  FAITH  49 

sions  of  nature ;  who  welcomes  the  simplest 
thought  of  truth  or  beauty  as  the  return  for  the 
seed  He  has  sown  upon  "  the  old  fallows  of 
eternity " ;  who  rejoices  at  every  faltering  re- 
sponse to  the  age-old  cry  of  wisdom  in  the 
streets — the  Lord  of  hosts,  the  God  of  mountains 
and  seas,  and  the  Friend  of  httle  children. 
Surely  this  is  holy  ground  on  which  we  tread,  an 
enchanted  world  in  which  no  one  should  hve  an 
unlovely  life,  and  none  need  fear  to  die.  When 
Love  hath  told  its  story,  we  have  assurance, 
doubly  sure,  that  those  who  walked  with  us  and 
have  vanished  from  our  side  have  gone  into  the 
keeping  of  a  Love  greater  than  we  can  know — a 
Love  that  hath  within  it  the  secret  of  unknown 
redemptions.  This  it  was  that  moved  Emerson 
to  write  that  entry  in  the  Journal  of  his  sorrow : 

'•  When  I  think  of  you,  sweet  friend,  wife, 
angel  Ellen,  on  whom  the  spirit  of  knowledge 
and  the  spirit  of  hope  were  poured  in  equal  full- 
ness, when  I  think  of  you,  I  am  sure  we  have 
not  said  everlasting  farewells." 

Thus,  the  principles  of  thought,  the  prompt- 
ings of  conscience,  and  the  prophecies  of  love 
unite  to  confirm  the  ancient,  high,  heroic  faith 
of  humanity.  That  faith,  never  wholly  over- 
borne, facing  the  mystery  and  the  dark,  un- 
daunted by  disaster,  undismayed  by  death,  un- 
affrighted,  unbreakable,  dreaming  dreams  and 
pursuing  visions,  sets  its  star  as  high  as  thought 


50  THE  PROPHETIC  VISION 

can  fly.  Life  tries  it,  death  tests  it,  sin  be- 
shadows  it,  and  yet  it  is  victorious.  When  doubt 
deepens  faith  becomes  more  profound,  and  out 
of  the  blackest  tragedies  of  Hfe  it  rises  with  a 
song  of  triumph.  So  it  has  been  from  the  time 
the  oldest  book  in  the  world  was  written,  and  so 
it  will  be  until  whatever  is  to  be  the  end  of 
things. 


V 

THE  PATH  TO  REALITY 

O,  without  taking  anything  for  granted 
beyond  the  fact  that  we  exist,  we  have 
abundant  assurance  of  the  reality  of  a 
moral  and  spiritual  order,  and  of  our  citizenship 
in  it.  We  are  a  part  of  reality,  and  that  reality, 
as  we  find  it  in  our  own  being,  is  spiritual 
activity  and  intelligence,  in  which  we  may  par- 
ticipate to  the  utmost  of  our  capacity.  Though 
we  know  only  in  part,  and  that  a  tiny  part,  yet 
our  knowledge  is  real  as  far  as  it  goes,  and  not  a 
mere  guess  at  an  inscrutable  riddle. 

No  man,  not  Sophocles  himself,  ever  saw  the 
whole  of  life,  though  Matthew  Arnold  affirmed 
that  the  great  Greek  "  saw  life  steadily  and  saw 
it  whole."  Of  even  Shakespeare,  near  as  he 
seemed  to  come  to  it,  that  was  not  true.  Nor 
was  it  true  of  the  greatest  of  the  saints,  who 
confessed  their  limits  with  all  humility,  as,  for  ex- 
ample, in  the  exordium  to  the  "  Confessions  "  of  St. 
Augustine,  which  is  indeed,  as  Mallock  called  it, 
"  a  Magnificat  of  contradictions  "  :  but  his  words 
are  alive  and  aglow  with  a  sense  of  the  divine 
reality.  Agnostics  we  must  all  be,  by  the  very 
conditions  of  our  thought,  if  by  that  is  meant 

51 


52  THE  PROPHETIC  VISION 

that  we  do  not  know  the  whole  of  reality ;  but 
absolute  nescience  is  an  absurdity.  As  Cole- 
ridge sang : 

**  'Tis  the  sublime  in  man, 
Our  noontide  majesty,  to  know  ourselves 
Parts  and  proportions  of  one  wondrous  whole  ! 
This  fraternizes  man,  this  constitutes 
Our  charities  and  bearings." 


No  doubt  this  has  seemed  a  long  and  difficult 
way  of  arriving  at  the^questidn  before  us,  but  it 
is  the  way  we  must  travel  in  this  troubled  age. 
So  profound  has  been  the  unsettlement  of  faith 
in  the  last  fifty  years,  that  one  must  make  sure 
of  each  step  he  takes,  intellectually,  or  the  men 
of  our  time  will  not  follow.  Unless  it  is  shown 
that  man  is  capable  of  spiritual  knowledge,  he 
cannot  receive  any  revelation,  nor  will  he  listen 
to  any.  Since,  then,  we  have  this  witness  that 
the  world  of  spiritual  reality  is  there,  because  it 
is  also  here  within  ourselves,  we  are  prepared  to 
listen  to  the  poets,  prophets,  and  saints,  who 
point  to  higher  realities  and  lead  the  way.  Our 
thesis  has  to  do  with  the  art  of  spiritual  culture, 
which  Morley  has  described  on  a  stately  page  as 
something  more  than  mere  belief,  more  than  a 
correct  theology — an  inner  grace  and  habit  of 
soul,  an  achievement  of  experience,  by  which, 
though  still  toiling  amid  earthly  appetites,  the 
spirit,  purifying  itself  of  these,  learns  to  dwdl  in 


THE   PATH   TO   REALITY  53 

living  and  confident  communion  with  the  seen 
and  unseen  good.  Of  that  fine  art  the  saints 
are  the  masters,  beckoning  us  to  follow  on  to 
where  "  the  melodies  abide  of  the  everlasting 
chime,"  whose  sweet  tones  are  drowned  for  us 
in  the  din  and  hum  and  confusion  of  our  hurry- 
ing life. 

After  a  long,  patient,  discriminating,  loving 
study  of  the  lives  of  the  saints  and  prophets, 
and  especially  of  the  great  mystics — after  making 
due  allowance  for  human  frailty,  eccentricity  of 
temperament,  historical  environment,  and  per- 
sonal equation — three  things  must  impress  them- 
selves upon  the  student.  And  the  first  is  the 
fine  and  lofty  sanity,  the  delicate  and  divining 
sagacity,  of  these  friends  and  helpers  of  those  who 
would  live  in  the  spirit.  Of  a  truth  Carlyle  may 
say  that,  if  any  one  is  beside  himself,  it  is  we, 
not  they:  we  who  are  tossed  on  reef-strewn, 
mirage-haunted  seas,  trying  to  accomplish  a 
"  circumnavigation  of  hope,"  whereas  they  have 
entered  the  haven  of  Truth.  When  we  would 
know  what  the  human  soul  may  become,  while 
yet  on  this  bank  and  shoal  of  Time,  we  have 
only  to  look  into  their  lives,  where  the  baser 
passions  of  our  nature  are  subdued  to  the  service 
of  the  spirit,  resulting  in  a  vision  of  God  which 
nothing  can  dim,  an  indifference  to  earthly  lot 
which  makes  them  master  of  it,  and  a  still  depth 
of  power  which   gives   to  their  simple  words  a 


54  THE   PROPHETIC  VISION 

Strange  and  compelling  charm.  They  have, 
besides,  an  inner  grace  of  soul,  a  secret  of 
strength  and  quietness  which  the  learned  and 
worldly  wise  know  not,  and  withal  a  joy  as  of 
those  who  see  life  from  the  inside  and  speak 
from  the  centre.     Thus  : 

"  Ruysbroeck  was  a  humble  Flemish  priest  of 
the  fifteenth  century.  None  the  less,  in  the 
order  of  genius  the  uncultured  Ruysbroeck,  as  a 
theologian,  and  consequently  as  a  philosopher 
and  a  poet,  is  as  far  above  Bossuet  as  Dante,  for 
instance,  is  above  Boileau.  Face  to  face  with 
the  mysteries  that  shroud  God  and  man,  Bossuet 
seeks,  argues,  and,  so  to  speak,  gropes ;  Ruys- 
broeck knows,  describes,  or  rather  sings,  and 
contemplates.  This  illiterate  mystic  of  an  ob- 
scure age  finds  himself  at  home  in  the  sublime  as 
in  his  own  sphere ;  he  speaks  of  what  is  familiar  to 
him  ;  the  wise  doctor  of  the  world  remains  with- 
out. Bossuet  does  not  enter,  he  does  not  open, 
he  does  not  see.  Bossuet  spins  words,  Ruys- 
broeck pours  out  streams  of  light.  It  seems  as 
if  Bossuet  were  that  mighty  wind  which  was 
heard  in  the  Upper  Chamber ;  the  brief  words  of 
Ruysbroeck  are  the  tongues  of  fire,  living  and 
enlightening  flame."  ^ 

One  who  reads  for  the  first  time  the  visions, 
locutions,  and  revelations  of  Santa  Teresa,  with- 
out knowing  her  and  the  story  of  her  life,  might 
»«  A  Mediaeval  Mystic,"  by  D.  V.  Scully  (1910). 


THE  PATH  TO  REALITY  55 

well  be  staggered.  But  when  one  comes  to  know 
what  manner  of  person  she  really  was — a  woman 
of  purest  Castilian  blood,  of  brilliant  intellect, 
of  rare  literary  genius,  of  humour  as  delicious 
as  that  of  Cervantes ;  a  cool-headed  business 
woman ;  a  psychologist  of  amazing  lucidity ;  an 
organizer  and  leader — one  begins  to  see  that  she 
was  not,  as  so  many  think  a  saint  must  somehow 
be,  an  inflamed  enthusiast  who  retreated  from  the 
world  to  follow  a  visionary  life.  No  ;  she  was  a 
truly  noble,  sweet  and  sane  soul,  prodigal  in  her 
gifts,  prodigious  in  her  activities — a  woman  wear- 
ing upon  her  forehead  the  final  consecration  of 
great  genius,  in  worldly  not  less  than  in  spiritual 
affairs,  dowered  with  that  exaltation  of  personal- 
ity which  catches  up  the  pedestrian  qualities  into 
a  white  light  and  conquers  by  heavenly  beauty 
and  practical  capacity — out  of  whose  profound 
life  of  prayer  came  answering  visions  and  voices. 
One  who  studies  her  life,  character,  and  spiritual 
accomplishments  is  almost  sure,  if  not  hopelessly 
biased,  to  imitate  her  severest  critics  in  her  own 
day,  who  began  by  doubting  and  ended  by  be- 
lieving and  following  her. 

And  the  next  thing  that  strikes  the  student,  as 
he  recalls  those  shining  lives,  is  their  scrupulous, 
sleepless  vigilance  against  anything  resembling 
illusion  or  unreahty.  All  of  us  know,  for  ex- 
ample, how  Augustine  suspected  the  witchery  of 
music,  for  fear  its  sensuous  appeal  might  in  some 


56  THE  PROPHETIC  VISION 

fashion  becloud  the  clear  vision  of  the  soul,  and 
lead  him  to  mistake  feelings  for  the  divine  facts 
of  the  Gospel.  In  a  memorable  passage*  he  tells 
of  "  that  one  moment  of  knowledge  "  which  he 
sighed  after  so  earnestly,  when  the  tumult  of  the 
flesh  is  silenced — hushed  the  phantasies  of  earth, 
and  the  fancies  of  the  imagination  ;  every  tongue, 
every  sign,  and  whatsoever  exists  by  passing 
away ;  only  the  inner  ear  open  to  Him  who  cre- 
ated it,  that  He  alone  may  speak,  not  by  it,  but 
by  Himself;  that  he  might  hear  the  impalpable 
murmur  of  His  voice,  not  by  fleshly  tongue,  nor 
angelic  voice,  nor  sound  of  thunder,  nor  the  ob- 
scurity of  a  similitude  ;  but  "  might  hear  Hiin — 
Him  whom  in  these  we  love — without  these,  like 
as  we  two," — mother  and  son  at  the  Ostia  win- 
dow. How  startling  are  his  words  when,  after 
submitting  his  experience  to  the  most  terrible  of 
critical  tests,  he  cried,  "  O  Lord,  if  I  am  deceived, 
it  is  Thou  who  hast  deceived  me  !  "  So,  too,  in 
the  "  Life  of  Santa  Teresa,"  written  by  herself — 
a  book  "  perfumed  by  the  winds  and  flowers  of 
heavenly  places," — we  see,  again  and  again,  how 
careful,  how  relentless,  she  was  in  her  self-criti- 
cism, lest  her  imagination  betray  her.  Catherine 
of  Siena — gay  and  loving  as  well  as  austere  ;  pit- 
iless to  herself,  while  full  of  reproach  for  de- 
manding too  much,  spiritually,  of  others  ;  a  mys- 
tic with  a  genius  of  common  sense — has  left  us  a 
> "  Confessions,"  Book  IX,  Chap.  X. 


THE  PATH   TO   REALITY  57 

code^  by  which  she  tested  the  authenticity  of 
her  visions,  and  Newman  himself  could  not  have 
been  more  merciless  in  analyzing  his  soul  than 
was  she.  This  is  the  constant  and  characteristic 
attitude  of  all  the  great  mystics,  who  were  not 
visionaries  but  men  and  women  of  vision,  who 
had  no  wish  to  found  their  faith  in  unreality. 

Nor  should  we  forget — how  can  we  forget  ? — 
that  they  were,  all  of  them,  practitioners  of  "  the 
presence  of  God,"  men  and  women  who  pursued 
spiritual  culture  with  a  passionate  and  persistent 
intensity;  and  they  were  granted  a  rich  reward. 
Love  of  God,  though  the  most  commanded  vir- 
tue, is,  apparently,  the  rarest  among  men,  who 
usually  mistake  for  it  a  kind  of  solemn  awe  in 
the  presence  of  Infinity.  At  least  it  often  seems 
to  be  so  in  our  debonaire  and  complacent  age, 
despite  its  exaltation  of  sociology  into  a  sort  of 
religion.  But  when  we  turn  the  pages  of  the 
mystics  we  meet  a  different  air,  like  the  vernal 
wind  which  Dante  felt  touching  his  temples  when 
he  entered  the  middle  Paradise,  bringing  perfume 
and  bird-song  from  the  forest  of  Chiassi. 
Through  their  writings  is  wafted  a  lyric  joy  of 
happy  fellowship  with  God,  an  exalted  delight  in 
communion   with    Him,   subdued,  always,  to   a 

1 "  Catherine  of  Siena,"  by  E.  G.  Gardner  (1909).  Also 
«« St.  Catherine  of  Siena  and  Her  Times,"  by  the  author  of 
**  Mademoiselle  Mori  "  (1910),  than  which  it  would  be  difficult  to 
find  a  historical  biography  better  done. 


58  THE  PROPHETIC  VISION 

cleansing  and  healing  humility  in  His  presence. 
Their  voices  are  of  many  keys  and  tones,  and 
their  visions  are  of  different  degrees  of  vividness 
and  value,  but  with  one  accord  they  report  the 
same  ineffable  reality.  As  Jacob  Behmen  said  of 
himself,  they  claimed  no  special  gift  or  grace 
which  may  not  be  enjoyed  by  all  who  will  devote 
themselves  to  it,  and  follow  on  to  know  the 
Truth  in  its  beauty.  If  it  be  said  that  there  are 
sane  and  reasoned  philosophies  whose  content 
differs  in  no  wise  from  what  the  mystics  behold, 
the  reply  is  that  what  the  philosopher  discerns 
afar  off,  in  a  series  of  apparently  contradictory 
definitions,  the  mystic  knows  as  an  intimate  real- 
ity, by  realizing  and  transmuting  it  into  a  radiant 
life.  Even  when  judged  pragmatically,  as  is  the 
fashion  of  the  hour,  their  vision  is  attested  as  au- 
thentic by  its  fruits  in  moral  purity,  intellectual 
beauty,  and  spiritual  character,  as  well  as  in  the 
arts  of  benign  service  to  man  which  so  busily  en- 
gage their  hands. 

If  the  old  saints  seem  far  off,  hidden  in  dim 
mist,  and  associated  with  ecclesiastical  orders 
aHen  to  our  own,  then  let  us  study  the  prophetic 
experience  of  Lord  Tennyson — how,  at  the  end 
of  long  vigils  of  thought,  there  came  lucid,  lumi- 
nous, triumphant  visions  of  God  and  the  fashion 
of  things  to  be.  It  must  always  be  a  matter  of 
wonder,  if  nothing  more,  that,  in  a  poem  written 
in   1840,  that  poet-seer  foresaw  the  approaching 


THE  PATH  TO   REALITY  59 

clouds  of  doubt,  forefelt  the  agony  and  travail  of 
faith,  and  fought  out  in  advance  the  battles  of  the 
next  sixty  years.  Moreover,  the  persistence  of 
his  poetic  gift  in  all  its  glory — a  marvel  scarcely 
rivalled  since  Sophocles — made  possible  the 
emergence  in  him  of  forces  which  must  always 
have  lain  deep  in  his  nature,  but  which  the  luxu- 
riance of  his  early  fancy  obscured ;  and  in  his  later 
years  he  became  a  forthspeaker  of  "  those  great- 
est, those  undiscoverable  things  which  can  never  be 
wholly  known  but  must  still  less  be  wholly  ignored 
or  forgotten."  *  The  secret  of  it  lay  in  his  gift  of 
sincere,  still,  almost  trance-like  vision,  which  he 
himself  has  described  in  a  passage  in  the  *'  Ancient 
Sage,"  so  far  as  it  can  be  told  in  words,  and  in 
which  many  of  his  greatest  lines  seemed  to  flash 
into  his  mind  perfect.  Here  was  a  man  of  the 
world — though  assuredly  not  a  worldly  man — to 
whom  the  unseen  order  was  more  real  than  the  solid 
earth,  and  who  was  more  a  citizen  of  the  kingdom 
of  heaven  than  a  subject  of  his  own  queen. 

As  to  the  nature  of  those  heavenly  visions  and 
voices,  to  which  the  saints  were  so  sweetly  obe- 
dient, it  is  enough  to  say,  with  Archbishop  Alex- 
ander, that  all  things  awful,  wondrous  and  beau- 
tiful, that  are  according  to  the  analogy  of  faith, 
we  may  receive  with  grateful  hearts.     Questions 

1  See  the  remarkable  study  of  '«  Tennyson  as  Prophet,"  by 
F.  W.  H,  Myers,  in  his  volume  entitled, "  Science  and  a  Future 
Life"  (1893J. 


6o  THE   PROPHETIC  VISION 

as  to  the  objective  and  subjective  have,  in  this 
sphere,  no  meaning  whatsoever.  What  becomes 
of  this  distinction  in  presence  of  the  fact  that  in 
God  we  Hve  and  move  and  have  our  being — Pie 
in  us,  we  in  Him — we  ourselves  a  part  of  the 
very  reahty  which,  in  these  lofty  spirits,  becomes 
incandescent  with  light  and  beauty  ?  If  the  vi- 
sions of  saints  were  shaped  and  coloured  by  the 
forms  of  faith  and  thought  current  in  their  age,  so 
is  all  religious  experience  of  whatever  kind.  When 
wise  and  sane  men,  and  women  of  bright-eyed 
sagacity,  inebriated  with  the  strong  wine  of  no  fa- 
natical contagion,  but  calmly  reading  or  quietly 
meditating,  tell  us  that  they  see  angelic  forms  and 
hear  voices  of  comfort  and  command,  we  must  as- 
cribe their  experiences  to  the  unsealed  eye  of  the 
pure  heart.  If  there  be  any  virtue  in  prayer,  any 
vision  in  purity  of  heart,  any  power  in  the  prom- 
ises of  the  Bible  or  of  our  own  nature,  then  their 
visions  are  among  the  sweetest  verities  of  life. 

Yes  ;  what  the  poet,  the  seer  and  the  prophet 
see  is  there  ;  for  they  were  there  and  knew  for 
themselves  and  not  for  another.  Either  all  the 
apostles,  martyrs,  saints,  and  mystics  were  mad, 
"  with  an  incredible  coincidence  and  collaboration 
of  delusion,"  or — the  thing  is  simply  true.  With 
some  of  us  the  pressing  question  is  not  as  to  the 
objective  reality  of  the  visions  of  St.  Paul  or  of 
Santa  Teresa,  but  why  there  is  in  our  own  lives 
so  little  of  like  vividness  and  victory ! 


The  Unity  of  Faith 


Is  the  difference  of  phraseology  in  the 
expression  of  teaching  the  principal 
difference  between  the  Christian  ages? 


THINGS  WHICH  DIFFER 

SO  intricate  a  question,  if  rightly  pursued, 
would  require  not  only  a  survey  of  the 
whole  history  of  dogma  and  the  church, 
but  a  depth  and  delicacy  of  insight  to  which  few 
can  lay  claim.  No  such  high  task  is  here  at- 
tempted, but  the  more  modest  one  of  following, 
so  far  as  it  can  be  traced,  a  unity  of  religious 
experience  underlying  the  multi-coloured  dialects 
of  faith.  Since  religion  is  a  life,  that  fact 
promises  variety  of  form,  colour,  and  expression 
— its  varied  shapes  emphasizing  a  fundamental 
unity,  while  adding  infinitely  to  its  picturesque- 
ness  and  beauty. 

Any  study  of  this  kind  touches,  of  necessity, 
upon  many  things  about  which  men  hold  vary- 
ing and  perhaps  conflicting  opinions  ;  but  as  it  is 
an  inquiry  into  the  nature  of  our  differences,  not 
into  their  vaHdity,  it  may  be  discussed  quite 
frankly.  Some  may  take  issue,  at  the  outset, 
with  the  answer  given  to  the  question,  as  tend- 
ing to  blur  what  should  be  kept  clearly  distinct ; 
and  others  will  chide  because  it  does  not  go  far 
enough.     In  any  case,  should  the  reader  disagree 

63 


64  THE  UNITY  OF  FAITH 

it  is  open  to  him  to  adopt  the  attitude  of  the 
Turkish  cadi  towards  an  inquisitive  EngHsh 
traveller  :  "  Oh,  my  Lamb  !  seek  not  after  the 
things  that  concern  thee  not,  and  be  not  over- 
exercised  about  them.  Thou  camest  to  us,  and 
WQ  welcomed  thee :  go  now  in  peace.  Of  a 
truth  thou  hast  spoken  many  words,  but  there  is 
no  harm  done,  for  the  speaker  is  one,  and  the 
listener  is  another." 

The  question,  as  stated,  has  to  do  with  the 
language  of  religion.  It  asks  us  if  it  is  not  true 
that  the  Christian  ages  of  the  past — and,  by  the 
same  token,  the  Christian  churches  of  the  present 
— have  not  all  along  been  trying,  each  in  its  own 
tongue,  to  say  the  same  things  ?  To  this  question 
we  may  give,  without  hesitation,  an  affirmative 
answer,  despite  much  that  seems  to  cry  out 
against  it.  If  on  the  surface  we,  like  our  fathers 
before  us,  are  divided,  often  to  all  appearances 
hopelessly  divided,  in  the  depths  we  are  one. 
Debate  and  argument,  views  and  opinions  drive 
and  keep  us  apart,  but  when  we  bow  in  prayer, 
or  climb  the  stairway  of  song,  we  find  not  only 
ourselves,  but  the  great  household  of  faith  in  all 
ages — men  breathing  the  same  aspirations  and 
needs,  the  same  passion  for  God,  the  same  loyalty 
to  truth,  the  same  joy  in  one  Eternal  Hope.  It 
is  true  of  religion,  even  in  its  intellectual  aspect 
and  expression,  that  those  who  go  deep  enough 
discover  harmonies  underlying  seeming  discord ; 


THINGS  WHICH   DIFFER  65 

but  it  is  more  vividly  true  of  our  fellowship  in 
the  hfe  of  the  spirit. 

Those  who  have  met  that  bright,  unencum- 
bered little  book,  *'  Recent  British  Philosophy," 
by  the  late  David  Masson,  will  recall  a  striking 
passage  containing  an  illustration  as  homely  as 
it  is  pertinent  to  the  matter  in  hand.  *'  It  will  be 
a  dreary  day  for  the  world,"  he  remarks,  "  when 
disagreements  cease,  when  there  are  not  even 
fundamental  differences.  There  is  an  old  Wilt- 
shire song  which  had  this  remarkable  stanza : 

*'  *  If  all  the  world  were  of  one  religion 
Many  a  living  thing  should  die; 
But  I  will  never  forget  my  true  love, 
Nor  in  any  way  His  name  deny  !  ' 

Now  if  there  is  any  man  among  us  who  has  pre- 
eminently helped  to  keep  Britain  from  that 
danger  of  intellectual  death  to  many  which 
would  arise  from  her  being  of  one  religion  in 
philosophy,  it  is  John  Stuart  Mill." 

Against  an  unnatural  or  enforced  uniformity 
of  opinion,  or  an  equally  unnatural  indifference, 
such  a  warning  is  certainly  valid.  Even  the 
scepticism  of  Mill,  so  Masson  thought,  had  a 
place  and  value  in  religion,  as  the  party  of  the 
opposition  has  its  value  in  politics — useful  as  a 
critic  but  disastrous  when  it  comes  into  power. 
In  a  slightly  different  shape  the  same  principle 


66  THE   UNITY   OF   FAITH 

applies  to  our  various  creeds  and  sects,  which 
some  good  men  are  so  eager  to  unite.  There 
have  already  been  some  amalgamations,  and 
there  will  be  more,  but  we  are  not  likely  to  see 
all  our  churches  fused  into  one  body.  Nor  do 
we  desire  it.  There  was  unity  of  that  kind  for 
twelve  long  centuries,  and  there  has  never  been 
anything  worse.  Whenever  attempts  have  been 
made  to  make  the  world  of  one  theology,  there 
have  been  serious  losses,  and  the  common  faith 
has  suffered.  In  every  case  freedom,  tolerance, 
charity,  the  confidence  that  truth  will  triumph, 
and  many  other  precious  things,  have  died ;  and 
that  is  too  heavy  a  price  to  pay  for  what  is  after 
all  a  misfortune  and  a  folly.  Our  different  modes 
of  thought  and  worship,  in  so  far  as  they  meet 
the  varied  interests,  temperaments  and  needs 
of  men,  are  among  the  •'  living  things  "  which 
should  never  die.  They  have  indeed  an  essence 
of  unity,  but  it  shows  itself  not  less  in  their  va- 
riety than  in  their  service  to  the  soul  of  man. 

Arnold  of  Rugby  proposed  to  unite  the  sects 
by  law,  forgetting,  apparently,  that  our  historic 
religious|fellowships  rest  not  simply  upon  creeds, 
and  are  not  held  together  by  logic.  They  are, 
instead,  great  communions,  united  by  powerful 
sentiments  of  affection  and  loyalty,  and  by  vital 
religious  ideals  embodied  in  their  leaders  and 
imbedded  in  their  institutional  hfe.  They  are 
set  deep  not  only  in  the  habits  and  customs  of 


THINGS  WHICH   DIFFER  67 

centuries,  but  in  the  spiritual  experience  of  gen- 
erations of  devout  men.  If  their  roots  did  not 
go  deeper  than  logic  they  might  be  more  amena- 
ble to  opposition,  criticism  and  appeal,  but  they 
would  also  be  less  significant.  Calvinism,  which 
at  first  glance  seems  to  be  a  very  simple  and  defi- 
nite thing,  is  in  fact  highly  complex.  It  stands 
indeed  for  a  certain  doctrine  of  God  centrally, 
but  with  that  doctrine  is  interwoven  a  whole 
system  of  thought,  and,  what  is  more,  a  certain 
related  attitude  of  mind  towards  religion  and 
life.  It  has,  besides,  a  long  history,  and  through 
the  years  there  has  been  formed  a  psychological 
and  atmospheric  deposit,  so  to  speak,  which  is 
much  harder  to  alter  than  any  mere  creed.  So 
that,  while  there  was  point  to  the  thrust  of  the 
saucy  wit  when  he  said  that  the  trouble  with  our 
differing  sects  is  that  no  one  of  them  is  large 
enough  to  contain  more  than  one  idea,  it  did 
not  pierce  to  the  deeper  reality  below. 

Of  a  truth  it  would  be  a  dreary  day  should  all 
differences  be  melted  into  what  Emerson  called 
"  a  mush  of  concession,"  and  all  churches  merged. 
There  are  yet  fundamental  differences  which  can- 
not be  thus  erased.  Theology  is  not  a  science 
of  shadows,  nor  did  Athanasius  stand  out  against 
the  world  in  behalf  of  a  phantom.  Though  he 
seemed  to  be  contending  for  a  tiny  Greek  letter, 
he  was  in  reality  fighting  for  a  profound  and 
precious  truth,  which  it  were  a  sin  to  surrender. 


68  THE   UNITY   OF   FAITH 

One  of  the  great  attributes  of  man,  it  has  been 
said,  is  his  willingness  to  abandon  his  warm  fire- 
side and  throw  himself  on  a  filmy,  intangible 
principle,  even  though  that  principle  may  seem 
to  others  thin,  unimportant,  and  largely  unin- 
telligible. As  between  Athanasius  and  that 
liberalism  which  holds  nothing  worth  fighting 
for,  on  the  ground,  as  Renan  said,  that  inasmuch 
as  no  one  can  know  anything,  there  is  room  in 
the  infinite  for  each  to  fashion  his  own  romance, 
there  is  but  one  choice.  Perhaps  this  was  what 
Newman  meant  when  he  said  that  it  would  be 
better  for  England  were  it  vastly  *'  more  bigoted, 
more  fierce  in  its  religion  than  at  present  it  shows 
itself  to  be."  The  day  will  doubtless  come,  and 
it  may  be  close  at  hand,  when  a  truly  catholic 
creed  will  be  wrought  out  and  a  real  unity  of 
faith  achieved.  But  if  convictions  are  laid  aside, 
if  the  hard-won  trophies  of  the  past  are  sacrificed 
for  the  sake  of  union,  we  shall  have  not  the  unity 
of  the  Church,  but  the  unity  of  the  churchyard. 
There  is  much  to  regret  in  our  theological  dis- 
putes, but  how  many  a  hving  thing  would  die 
were  those  debates  hushed  until,  by  legitimate 
discussion,  we  arrive  at  some  worthy  agreement 
that  shall  be  lasting. 

Our  different  churches  represent,  most  pictur- 
esquely, the  great  debates  of  Christian  history. 
Arius  and  Athanasius  are  with  us  still,  as  are 
Calvin  and  Arminius,  Channing  and  Ballon,  in 


THINGS   WHICH   DIFFER  69 

monuments  of  brick  and  stone — if  not  in"  frozen 
music,"  as  Goethe  described  architecture,  then  in 
petrified  discord.  Yet  each  sect  has  its  own 
phase  and  expression  of  truth,  without  which  it 
could  not  be  a  hving  thing ;  for,  as  Carlyle  has 
reminded  us,  religions  live  not  by  their  false- 
hood, but  by  their  truth.  No  one  can  doubt 
that  the  Quaker,  the  Calvinist,  the  Arminian,  the 
Catholic,  indeed  every  form  ^of  faith,  has  helped 
to  widen  the  skirts  of  light,  despite  their  feuds. 
If  then  it  be  true  that  the  chief  differences 
between  the  Christian  ages  are  differences  of 
phraseology,  it  holds  true,  equally,  of  our  various 
sects,  which,  as  a  fact,  embody  and  perpetuate 
the  controversies  of  vanished  times.  So  far  as 
our  divisions  are  due  to  local  accent  and  provin- 
cial outlook,  they  may  be  removed  ;  but  the  his- 
toric Christian  communions  will  abide.  Our 
study  has  thus  not  only  an  intellectual  interest  in 
old  systems  and  debates,  whereof  the  din  is  now 
almost  hushed,  but  also  an  immediate  and  prac- 
tical appeal  in  behalf  of  a  more  sympathetic 
interpretation  of  differing  tongues. 

What  we  really  need  is  not  a  surrender  of  our 
separate  loyalties,  still  less  an* abandonment  of 
principle,  but  a  unity  of  spirit  in  the  bonds  of 
peace.  Such  a  comity  of  sects  is  now  approach- 
ing ;  and  it  will  come  when  the  churches  cease 
to  exaggerate  their  peculiarities,  after  the  manner 
of  certain    characters    in    the  Dickens   stories — 


70  THE   UNITY   OF  FAITH 

"  Mr.  Carker  "  and  his  teeth,  "  Captain  Cuttle  " 
and  his  hook,  and  "  Pleasant  Riderhood  "  and 
his  black  hair — and  set  themselves  to  their 
common  task,  each  with  a  sanctified  ambition  to 
live  better  and  do  more  good  than  its  neighbour. 
This  is  more  than  mere  tolerance,  more  than  a 
dilettante  curiosity  to  know  the  faith  of  our 
fellows.  It  is  a  recognition  of  a  deeper  unity  of 
things  which  differ,  which  should  enable  all  who 
stand  dedicated  to  religion  to  know  religion 
when  it  happens  to  appear  in  a  guise  different 
from  their  own,'  and  to  work  as  friendly  but 
earnest  rivals  for  a  supreme  end. 


II 

THE  DEEPER  UNITIES 

IF  this  seems  to  be  a  digression  at  the  be- 
ginning, it  is  but  to  emphasize  the  essential 
unity  of  the  life  of  the  spirit  realizing  itself 
in  diversity  of  form.  Just  because  religion  is  a 
living  thing — "-the  life  of  God  in  the  soul  of 
man,"  as  Henry  Scougali '  described  it — renewing 
itself  in  each  personahty,  and  in  each  epoch, 
there  can  be  no  such  thing  as  uniformity  of 
thought  or  experience.  But  there  is,  and  always 
has  been,  an  underlying  unity  of  faith  and  hope. 
So  it  is  that  each  age,  like  each  individual, 
gives  an  account  of  what  it  has  apprehended  in 
its  own  dialect ;  hence  the  variegated  history  of 
theology.  Wesley  saw  this,  and  in  the  latter 
part  of  his  hfe  reposed  more  and  more  in  a  feel- 
ing of  cathoHc  charity,  to  which  his  nature 
always  inclined  him,  adopting  as  his  own  the 
words  of  William  Law :  "  Perhaps  what  the  best 
heathens  called  Reason,  and  Solomon  Wisdom, 
St.  Paul  Grace  in  general,  St.  John  Righteous- 
ness or  Love,  Luther  Faith,  Fenelon  Virtue,  may 
be   only  different  expressions    for   one  and   the 

1  "  The  Life  of  God  in  the  Soul  of  Man,"  by  Henry  Scougali 
(1868). 

71 


72  THE   UNITY   OF   FAITH 

same  blessing,  the  light  of  Christ  shining  in  dif- 
ferent degrees  under  different  dispensations. 
Why  then  so  many  words,  and  so  little  charity 
exercised  among  Christians,  about  the  particular 
term  of  a  blessing  experienced  more  or  less  by 
all  righteous  men  !  "  * 

Here  is  an  answer  to  our  question,  all  the 
more  satisfying  because  it  sees  that  there  are 
many  gates  to  the  City  uf  God,  though  we  can 
never  forget  the  gate  by  which  we  entered.  It 
implies,  what  St.  Augustine  affirmed  in  words 
too  often  used  polemically,  that  what  is  now 
called  the  Christian  religion  has  existed  among 
the  ancients,  and  was  not  absent  from  the  begin- 
ning of  the  human  race ;  and  what  Channing 
meant  when  he  said  that  Zoroaster,  Buddha, 
Plato,  and  Epictetus  had  led  him  up  the  white 
marble  steps  to  the  Cross  in  the  Christian  chan- 
cel, giving  him  their  whispered  benediction. 
Not  only  in  the  reverent  and  devout  minds  of 
the  pagan  world,  but  in  others  not  nominally 
Christian,  it  should  be  easy  to  discern  the  Christ- 
spirit,  which  we  are  all  endeavouring,  each  in  his 
own  way,  to  realize  in  our  lives :  something 
which  attracts,  as  nothing  else  does,  with  the 
promise  of  peace  and  security  of  heart  amid  the 
dark  confusions  of  time.  Surely  it  should  not  be 
hard  to  recognize  that  under  the  categories  of  an 
alien  philosophy  Spinoza  was  striving  to  fathom 
1"  Life  of  Wesley,"  by  Robert  Soutlicy,  Vol.  I,  p.  i6o  (1858). 


THE   DEEPER   UNITIES  73 

the  facts  of  a  profound  religious  experience, 
which  meant  Hfe  to  him  in  time  of  trial.  He 
was,  as  Novalis  said,  a  God-intoxicated  man,  and 
though  his  system,  even  when  expounded  by  so 
able  a  thinker  as  Picton,  ^  reads  like  a  foreign 
tongue,  it  is  akin  to  the  hallowing  truth  that  God 
is  near  and  not  far  ;  within  as  well  as  without ; 
in  the  very  heart  of  His  creation  ;  the  substance 
of  things  hoped  for,  and  the  underlying  reality 
of  things  seen  and  unseen.  Nor  can  any  one 
deny  that  the  Emerson  essay  on  The  Over-Soul 
is  but  another  version  of  the  truth  of  the  over- 
brooding,  indwelling  Spirit,  which  has  been  the 
life  of  the  Christian  Church  and  the  altar-fire  of 
its  pulpit  in  all  ages. 

Within  the  sphere  of  Christian  experience 
there  is  the  same  unity  of  essence  in  variety  of 
form,  though  we  may  easily  go  too  far,  as 
Schleiermacher  and  Ritschl  seemed  to  go,  in  is- 
olating Christian  experience  from  other  forms  of 
the  religious  life.  For  example:  nothing  is  more 
certain  than  that  it  has  been  a  sense  of  personal 
fellowship  with  Christ  which  has  kept  Christian- 
ity alive  upon  the  earth,  amid  errors  the  most 
prosaic,  the  most  irrational,  and  the  most  im- 
moral. Such  a  fellowship  was  the  secret  splen- 
dour of  the  life  of  St.  Paul,  without  whose  magnif- 
icent and  ceaseless  evangel  Christianity  might 
have  been  slow  in  making  its  advent  in  Europe. 
1  "  The  Religion  of  the  Universe,"  by  J.  A.  Picton  (1904). 


74  THE  UNITY  OF  FAITH 

So  it  has  been  all  down  the  ages,  through  a  suc- 
cession of  luminous  souls,  from  the  midday  vision 
on  the  Damascus  road  to  Horace  Bushnell,  who 
said  that  he  knew  Jesus  better,  far  better,  than  he 
knew  any  man  in  his  city.  But  they  err  who 
mistake  this  experience,  unique  and  wonderful  as 
it  is,  for  the  only  authentic  form  of  the  Christian 
life.  Some  of  the  most  deeply,  genuinely,  ten- 
derly rehgious  souls  have  not  enjoyed  such  an 
experience  of  companionship  with  the  Living 
Christ,  though  His  spirit  was  revealed  in  their 
lives  as  the  tints  are  in  a  rose.  Emerson  did 
not,*  nor  Channing,  nor  Martineau  whose  prayers, 
with  their  blend  of  love  and  awe,  are  heavenly 
visions  where  the  light  of  sense  goes  out  and  a 
Presence  ineffable  blurs  the  outlines  of  meditation. 
Surely  all  must  see  that  the  devout  life  is  the 
same,  however  the  outlook  of  the  intellect  may 
differ;  that  Emerson  and  Newman  were  akin  in 
soul,  and  that  Wesley  and  Channing  were  moved 

^  See,  particularly,  the  "  Divinity  School  Address."  Here  is, 
perhaps,  the  real  point  of  divergence  between  Evangelicals  and 
Unitarians,  their  theological  differences  being  only  so  many  shad- 
ows of  it.  Compare  the  words  of  Henry  Ward  Beecher; 
•'  Could  Theodore  Parker  worship  my  God  ? — Christ  Jesus  is 
His  name.  All  that  there  is  of  God  to  me  is  bound  up  in  that 
name.  A  dim  and  shadowy  effluence  rises  from  Christ,  and 
that  I  am  taught  to  call  the  Father.  A  yet  more  tenuous  and 
invisible  film  of  thought  arises,  and  that  is  the  Holy  Spirit. 
But  neither  are  to  me  aught  tangible,  restful,  accessible." 
("New  Star  Papers,"  pp.  197-198,  1859). 


THE  DEEPER  UNITIES  75 

by  a  common  and  high  religious  motive.  Not 
only  is  it  the  same  in  essence,  but  all  the  richer 
for  its  variety  of  outlook  and  expression ;  for,  as 
has  been  well  said,  if  Emerson  were  forced  to  be 
a  Wesley,  or  a  Moody  forced  to  be  a  Whitman, 
the  total  vision  of  the  divine  would  suffer. 

If  Christ  be  a  cosmic  and  world-redeeming 
reality.  His  appeal  must  be  wide  enough  to  in- 
clude the  totality  of  human  life  in  all  its  diver- 
sity of  temperament,  aptitude,  and  aspiration,  and 
not  simply  one  type  of  mind.  As  a  fact,  the  life 
of  Christ  in  the  souls  of  men  reveals  itself  in 
many  forms,  through  the  prism  of  differing  minds 
— in  Wesley  a  burning  white  light ;  in  Brown- 
ing, a  series  of  dazzling  visions ;  in  Bushnell, 
logic  tipped  with  mystical  fire;  in  Brooks,  a 
passionate  humanism — but  the  reality  behind  all 
of  them  is  the  same  "  yesterday,  to-day,  and  for- 
ever." Happily,  the  error,  so  frequent  in  the  past, 
of  making  one  type  of  emotional  experience 
the  test  of  Christian  hfe,  is  not  so  common  now 
— thanks  to  the  study  of  the  psychology  of  relig- 
ion. By  such  a  test  St.  Augustine  was  a  Chris- 
tian indeed,  as  no  one  can  doubt  who  reads  the 
eight  books  of  his  "  Confession,"  but  Phillips 
Brooks  was  not ;  whereas  the  hope  of  the  world 
lies  in  its  being  filled  up  with  men  like  Phillips 
Brooks.  Solemn,  awful  and  joyous  as  the  fact  of 
conversion  is,  it  takes  many  forms,  nor  is  it,  in 
any  one  form  at  least,  the  only  way  to  the  blessed 


76  THE   UNITY  OF  FAITH 

life.  As  Henry  Drummoiid  once  said,  it  is  the 
penalty  a  man  pays  for  the  failure  to  grow  spir- 
itually as  he  ought ;  and  while  most  men  have 
failed  in  just  that  manner,  we  have  to  remember 
that  the  ways  of  the  Spirit  are  many.  In  a  mat- 
ter so  indefinite  we  have  no  power  of  analysis, 
and  it  were  blasphemy  to  follow  with  a  note-book 
the  delicate  motions  of  the  Spirit,  who,  imaged 
as  a  dove,  flies  unseen  in  a  path  of  its  own.  To 
one  man  the  sense  of  the  presence  of  Christ 
comes  suddenly,  to  another  slowly,  to  another 
dimly,  it  may  be  ;  but  all  are  partakers  of  a  like 
precious  reality — Martineau  not  less  than  Maur- 
ice— their  differing  temperaments  and  casts  of 
intellect  forming  "  a  dome  of  many-coloured 
glass,  which  stains  the  bright  radiance  of  eter- 
nity." 

Spiritual  experience  is  thus  the  highest  unify- 
ing influence,  as  it  is  the  most  liberalizing  and 
satisfying.  It  gives  one  the  power  to  understand 
and  interpret  many  religious  dialects,  and  to  dis- 
cern in  the  past,  not  less  than  in  the  present, 
beneath  diversities  of  temperament  and  training, 
creed  and  cult,  the  foundations  of  the  Church  of 
God — meaning  by  the  Church  no  sect,  hierarchy, 
or  polity,  but  the  communion  of  saints,  the  his- 
toric fellowship  of  the  seekers  and  finders  of  God  : 
"  the  congregation,"  to  quote  old  Bishop  Pear- 
son, "  of  those  faithful  souls  here  on  earth,  who 
shall  hereafter  meet  in  heaven."     Such  a  man  is 


THE   DEEPER  UNITIES  77 

more  catholic  than  the  CathoHc  church  itself, 
open  of  mind,  hospitable  of  heart,  and  spiritually 
fraternal  with  all  who  love  God  and  seek  to  do 
His  will.  All  churches  belong  to  him,  so  far  as 
they  have  any  portion  of  divine  grace  in  their 
keeping,  or  any  evidence  of  divine  grace  in  their 
Avork  ;  and  all  books  in  aid  of  faith,  whether  by 
Augustine  or  Emerson,  Butler  or  Behmen,  IVIo- 
linos  or  Maurice.  He  is  at  home  in  every  place 
where  men  foregather  to  pray,  knowing  that  the 
visible  Church  of  Christ  is  everywhere ;  in  the 
plain  chapel  of  Martineau  or  in  St.  Paul's  cathe- 
dral ;  in  the  tabernacle  of  Spurgeon  and  in  the 
Greek  church  at  Moscow  ;  in  St.  Peter's  at  Rome, 
but  also  in  the  Quaker  meeting  house  where 
Whittier  and  Woolman  sat  in  silence,  awaiting 
the  promptings  of  the  Spirit.  He  does  not  find 
it  hard  to  keep  an  open  mind  and  a  kind  heart 
towards  all  his  fellow  workers,  assured,  with  Rus- 
kin,  that  "  there  is  a  true  Church  wherever  one 
hand  meets  another  helpfully — the  only  holy  or 
Mother*  church  which  ever  was  or  ever  shall  be." 

*  Not  even  Cardinal  Newman,  with  all  his  literary  magic, 
has  convinced  some  of  us — his  admiring  students — that  the 
Catholic  church  is  the  only  church  of  Christ.  There  is,  as  Dr. 
Denney  somewhere  remarks,  a  type  of  genius  which  seems 
made  for  this  task — a  daring,  paradoxical  genius,  with  some- 
thing dazzling  both  in  its  thought  and  style  to  carry  through  the 
necessary  tours  de  force.  It  is  seen  in  various  forms  in  Pascal 
and  De  Maistre,  and  in  Newman ;  but  how  empty  their  con- 
tention is,  when  that  peculiar  quality  of  genius  is  absent,  may  be 


78  THE  UNITY  OF  FAITH 

Socrates  made  the  discovery — perhaps  the 
greatest  ever  made — that  human  nature  is  uni- 
versal. By  his  searching  questions  he  found  that 
when  men  think  round  a  problem  they  disclose  a 
common  nature  and  a  common  system  of  truth. 
So  there  dawned  upon  him, from  this  fact,  the  truth 
of  the  kinship  of  mankind  and  the  unity  of  mind. 
His  insight  is  confirmed  when  we  set  the  teachings 
of  the  sages  side  by  side,  and  find,  after  compar- 
ison, that  the  final  conclusions  of  the  wisest  minds 
regarding  the  meaning  and  duty  of  life  are  har- 
monious, if  not  identical.  Though  shallow  minds 
may  wrangle,  the  deepest  minds  always  concur 
at  the  end  in  the  same  great  truths.  The  great 
historic  religions  have  been  variations  on  one 
motif,  differing  less  in  essentials  than  in  point  of 
emphasis,  depth  of  insight,  and  method  of  ap- 
peal. They  used  different  instruments,  with  vary- 
ing tones  and  keys,  but  they  played  the  same 
high  music,  expressing,  each  in  its  own  tongue, 

seen  in  "  Divine  Transcendence  and  its  Reflection  in  Religious 
Authority,"  by  J.  R.  Illingworth  (191 1).  With  their  doctrine 
of  a  visible,  God-guided  church,  we  are  in  fullest  accord  ;  but 
where  they  are  misled,  as  it  seems  to  us,  is  not  in  identifying 
that  church  with  the  Catholic  church,  but  in  so  far  as  they 
identify  it  with  that  church  to  the  exclusion  of  all  others.  For 
the  same  reason  the  Presbyterian  Assembly  blundered  when  it 
declared  the  Catholic  church  to  be  Anti-Christ,  and  a  syna- 
gogue of  Satan.  Dr.  Hodge,  of  Princeton,  made  vigorous  and 
able  protest  against  such  action,  and  his  arguments  are  as  valid 
to-day  as  they  were  half  a  century  ago.  («*  Life  of  Charles 
Hodge,"  by  A.  A.  Hodge.) 


THE   DEEPER  UNITIES  79 

the  one  great  human  experience  of  fellowship 
with  the  Father  of  our  spirits.  ReHgions  are 
many,  but  Religion  is  one — to  do  justly,  to  love 
mercy,  and  to  walk  humbly  with  God. 

Towards  this  great  and  simple  religion — greater 
than  all  sects,  yet  the  basis  of  each — the  world  is 
now  moving.  Forms  of  faith  build  and  unbuild 
themselves  like  summer  clouds,  but  the  substance 
of  faith  abides.  Theologies  are  but  sky-tents 
where  the  soul  of  man  rests  for  a  day  or  an  age 
in  its  journey  from  faith  to  faith.  That  religion 
which  is  the  fellowship  of  man  with  God  is  to 
the  passing  forms  of  faith  as  the  sunlight  to  the 
clouds,  as  the  sea  to  the  ships  that  float  upon  its 
bosom.  Beyond  the  clouds  is  the  sky.  Below 
the  ships  is  the  sea.  The  clouds  will  turn  to  rain 
and  then  to  mist  again,  and  the  ships  will  pass  on 
out  of  sight.  But  the  sky  remains,  and  the  sea 
ebbs  and  flows,  symbols  of  those  deeps  which 
call  to  deeps  in  our  fellowship  with  Him  who  in- 
habiteth  Eternity.  In  the  primal  sanctuary  of 
the  soul,  where  man  is  alone  with  God,  faith 
abides  in  unity  and  power. 


Ill 

THE  HIGHER  HARMONY 

I 

AS  in  the  depths,  so  in  the  heights  of  vision 
and  service,  men  who  are  sundered  far 
meet  in  one  fellowship  of  joy.  In  times 
of  uplift  and  insight,  when  the  tides  of  the  divine 
life  run  high,  the  dividing  barriers,  which  move 
with  us  like  the  horizon,  disappear,  and  the  unity- 
hidden  in  diversity  stands  fully  revealed.  It  was 
so  in  the  morning  of  Christianity,  when  the 
Church  was  a  centre  of  radiant  and  radiating  life 
— rich,  warm,  dynamic,  abundant — before  its 
glowing  ideals  had  crystallized  into  dogmas ; 
when  men  of  many  tribes  and  nations  heard  the 
Gospel,  each  in  the  tongue  wherein  he  was  born. 
This  higher  harmony  is  not  open  to  debate, 
though  as  regards  the  early  church  it  has  been 
denied.  The  effort  of  the  Tubingen  scholars  to 
show  that  our  New  Testament  was  the  result  of 
rival  schools  in  the  apostolic  church  failed. 
While  it  is  true  that  the  early  church  was  far 
from  being  a  scene  of  uniformity,  such  differen- 
ces as  appeared  were  not  speculative  at  all,  but 
largely  matters  of  temperament,  method,  and 
personal  equation  of  insight  and  outlook.      With 

80 


THE  HIGHER  HARMONY  8 1 

the  voice  of  the  Master  still  echoing,  and  the  air 
alive  and  palpitating  with  His  Presence,  no  one 
cared  to  define  a  dogma  or  to  formulate  a  sys- 
tem. When  St.  Paul  attempted  such  discussions 
his  logic  caught  fire,  his  language  jarred  in  the 
narrow  ways  of  human  imagery,  and  his  argu- 
ment almost  invariably  ended  in  a  blaze  of  ec- 
stasy. The  victorious  might  of  the  infant  church 
lay  not  in  its  dogmas,  but  in  its  fellowship  with 
the  Living  Christ,  its  heroic  motives,  its  quiet  and 
glad  enthusiasm,  and  its  all-transfiguring  heavenly 
vision.  Any  student  of  that  church  must  be 
impressed  with  its  freedom  from  metaphysical 
dogma,  its  unity  of  spirit,  and  its  abounding  vi- 
tality, which  grasped  the  crumbling  classic  world 
and  reshaped  it. 

Also,  every  renewal  of  Christianity  has  meant 
a  rediscovery  of  those  profound  realities  in  which 
the  power  of  religion  lies,  as  over  against  the 
ideas  which  divide  men.  If  we  study  the  historic 
revivals  we  always  find  in  them  a  more  vivid 
sense  of  the  Love  of  God  in  Christ,  an  unveiling 
of  the  might  of  prayer  as  the  most  vital  and 
practical  force  among  men,  and  a  deepening  of 
the  moral  life  bearing  fruit  in  heroic  and  beautiful 
philanthropies.  Of  the  revivals  of  the  early 
church  Harnack  said  truly  that  they  "  operated 
v/ith  such  purity  and  power  that  they  bore  pal- 
pably the  stamp  of  their  divine  origin,"  as  any 
one  can  believe  who  reads  the  story  of"  Fabiola," 


82  THE  UNITY  OF  FAITH 

by  Cardinal  Wiseman,  which  brings  from  afar  a 
whiff  of  the  air  of  sanctity  and  service  which 
pervaded  those  morning  years.  The  same  was 
true  in  the  days  of  Francis  of  Assisi,  who,  climb- 
ing Mount  Subasio,  and  watching  the  shafts  of 
sunlight  strike  the  snow-drifts,  "  felt  a  dehcious 
thrill,  all  his  being  was  calmed  and  uplifted,  the 
soul  of  things  caressed  him  gently  and  shed  upon 
him  peace."  Out  of  that  radiant  hour  was  born 
a  movement,  led  by  "  God's  Troubadour,"  which, 
with  its  blend  of  poetry,  piety,  and  pity,  redeemed 
Europe  from  dead  formalism  and  languorous 
luxury.  Who  can  forget  the  foresight  and  soHci- 
tude  of  Francis  for  the  outcasts,  and  those  smitten 
with  terrible  malady — how,  with  his  brethren, 
he  established  schools  for  the  leper  children,  and 
hospitals  for  those  far  gone  in  the  disease  ? 

So,  too,  in  the  great  revival  in  the  Rhineland, 
whether  in  its  first  stage  under  Eckhart,  or  in  its 
second  stage  under  the  wonderful  ministry  of 
Tauler — a  man  of  divine  pity,  in  whose  hands 
the  vestments  of  an  ecclesiastic  became  "  bandages 
for  the  bleeding  wounds  of  humanity,"  and  the 
ropes  of  the  belfry  tower  cords  of  sympathy 
between  God  and  man.  Recall  the  "  Black 
Death "  scourge — which  drove  Boccaccio  and 
his  friends  to  a  Florentine  villa  to  tell  salacious 
tales — when  the  secular  clergy  fled  in  panic  from 
the  sorely  smitten  city  of  Strasburg,  leaving 
Tauler  and  his  converts  to  nurse  the  sick,  minister 


THE   HIGHER   HARMONY  83 

to  the  dying,  and  bury  the  dead.  No  one  need 
be  told  what  the  Wesleyan  revival  did  for 
England,  rescuing  it,  as  Macaulay  said,  from 
something  like  a  French  Revolution,  cleansing 
its  literature  and  elevating  its  moral  and  social 
tone.  Again,  the  Oxford  Movement  within  the 
church,  despite  its  later  unfortunate  emphasis 
upon  things  sacerdotal,  was  a  renewed  sense  of 
the  awfulness  of  the  Unseen  ;  often  austere,  some- 
times extravagant,  but  true,  enduring,  and  far- 
reaching.'  As  Mozley  said  of  Keble  and  Newman, 
"  they  seemed  to  come  forth  from  a  different  and 
holier  sphere,"  and  their  words,  spoken  with  "  an 
intense  stillness,"  stirred  men  with  longings  for  a 
different  and  holier  life.  Such  tides  of  the  Spirit 
overflow  all  dividing  walls,  like  a  heavenly  Nile, 
and  lift  men  into  an  awful  yet  gracious  mystery, 
where  debate  is  lost  in  devout  wonder. 

Ever  fresh  surprise  at  the  vastness  and  triumph 
of  Love  has  been  the  wonder  of  such  times,  and 
it  has  found  centre  in  an  overwhelming  vision  of 
the  Cross  of  Christ.  When  Bernard  of  Clairvaux 
preached  from  the  hilltop  at  Vezelia,  there  arose 
from  the  sea  of  faces,  it  is  said,  a  shout,  "  Crosses, 
crosses  ! " — and  the  crusade  was  made.  When 
Daniel  Rowlands  made  his  pulpit  a  smoking  and 
thundering  Sinai,  he  was  warned  by  his  friend, 
Philip   Pugh,  that  terror  begets  terror,  whereas 

1 "  The  Oxford  Movement,"  by  R.  W.  Church  (1902).     Also 
"  The  Mystery  of  Newman,"  by  Henri  Bremond  (1907). 


84  THE  UNITY  OF  FAITH 

only  love  inspires  love.  Not  until  he  learned  to 
preach  the  sovereign  grace  of  the  Gospel  did  the 
eighteenth  century  revival  in  Wales  work  its 
wonder.  Then  the  debtor  remembered  his  debt, 
the  drunkard  returned  to  his  hearth  in  his  right 
mind,  the  prodigal  received  welcome  at  home, 
and  those  grown  gray  in  sin  saw  a  light  at  even- 
tide— all  because  one  morning  a  dark  Cross  stood 
on  a  little  hill,  and  the  One  who  died  upon  it  was 
found  to  be  a  Friend  and  a  Redeemer.  So  in  the 
ministry  of  Oberlin,  further  back,  there  arrived  a 
day  when  he  wrote,  "  I  preached  no  more  the 
pains  of  hell,"  and  the  restored  Gospel  of  Love 
won  its  way  as  summer  through  a  waiting  wood, 
changing  the  wintry  valleys  of  the  Vosges  into 
sanctuaries  of  piety  and  gladness.  Small  wonder 
that  such  awakenings  have  been  attended  by  out- 
bursts of  song,  for  *•  the  people  of  God  are  a  sing- 
ing people,  and  their  way  is  a  singing  way." 

Nor  should  we  forget  the  influence  of  the  great 
revivals  on  Christian  theology,  modifying  it,  as 
they  do,  in  the  only  way  it  can  ever  be  truly 
modified — that  is,  by  a  deeper,  more  vivid,  more 
victorious  experience  of  things  immortal.  Ever- 
more our  pressing  need  is  for  a  vital  theology 
that  springs  from  life  and,  returning  quickly  to 
the  life  from  which  it  springs,  gives  form  and 
clarity  to  experience  ;  for  if  we  are  to  think  about 
religion  in  any  great  and  conclusive  wa}^,  we 
must    think    religiously    from   the    inside.      St. 


THE   HIGHER  HARMONY  85 

Francis  with  his  passion  for  the  imitation  of 
Christ ;  Tauler  with  his  mystical  union  with  the 
Master ;  Luther  with  his  gospel  of  faith  ;  Wesley 
with  his  good  news  of  free  grace;  Moody  with 
his  vision  of  Love  divine  all  love  excelling — 
each  seized  the  truth  most  needful  for  his  age, 
and  without  deliberate  intention  modified  the 
current  theology  :  just  as  we  are  beginning  to  see 
in  what  ways  rehgious  thought  may  be  influenced 
by  the  social  activity  of  the  Church.  If  we  are 
to  have  a  great  revival  in  our  day,  it  must  be  by 
*'  the  good-will  of  Him  who  dwelt  in  the  Burning 
Bush,"  whose  Voice  from  the  midst  will  give  the 
accent  of  truth  for  our  vexed  and  nois}^  age  to 
those  who  approach,  with  reverent  and  earnest 
hearts,  the  Place  of  Hearing. 

n 

Add  now  the  witness  of  the  great  mystics,* 
who  have  been  the  living  bonds  of  union  between 
the   differing   sects,   and   the   redeemers   of  the 

1  Readers  who  may  wish  to  study  the  mystics  will  find  an  ad- 
mirable introduction  in  an  essay  on  Christian  mysticism,  with 
examples  of  mystical  exposition  of  truth,  entitled  "  The  Garden 
of  Nuts,"  by  W.  R.  Nicoll  (1905).  Then  there  are  Dr.  Alex- 
ander Whyte's  charming  "Appreciations"  of  Rehmen,  Santa 
Teresa,  Sir  Thomas  Browne,  and  Father  John  of  the  Greek 
church — biographical  studies  with  selections  from  their  writ- 
ings. Other  books,  among  a  number  too  great  to  name,  are 
the  "  Works  of  St.  John  of  the  Cross,"  with  preface  by  Cardinal 
Wiseman  (1864)  ;  "  Life  of  St.  John,"  by  David  Lewis  (1897)  '> 
"  Life  of  Madame  Guyon,"  by  T.  C.  Upham  (1905)  ;  "  Life  of 


86  THE  UNITY  OF  FAITH 

Church  in  times  of  arid  materialism,  spiritual 
apathy,  and  dismal  half-belief.  Amid  the  shifting 
scenes  of  theological  thought  they  sit  undisturbed 
by  the  permanent  fountains  of  religious  grace  and 
power,  having  a  "  sincere,  sweet  and  still  view  of 
the  Eternal  Truth," — to  use  the  words  of  Molinos, 
whose  gospel  of  quietness  and  confidence,  distilled 
into  his  "  Spiritual  Guide,"  though  suppressed  by 
the  Church,  flowed  on,  now  flooding  the  soul  of 
Guyon  and  Fenelon,  now  running  into  channels 
already  formed  by  the  early  Quakers,  now  de- 
scending deeply,  like  the  fabled  river  of  Arabia, 
out  of  sight,  but  never  lost.  Just  so  we  trace 
through  the  ages  a  shining  tradition  of  spiritual 
light,  a  glorious  communion  of  the  "  friends  and 
aiders  of  those  who  live  in  the  spirit,"  whose 
teachings  underlie  all  sects  and  overarch  all 
creeds — prophets  of  the  Universal  Spiritual 
Church  of  God,  to  whose  service  our  institutions 
are  but  instrumental  and  from  which  they  derive 
their  meaning  and  beauty. 

Tauler,"  with  twenty-five  of  his  sermons,  preface  by  Charles 
Kingsley  (1905)  ;  •*  Life  of  St.  Teresa,"  written  by  herself — a 
memorable  book ;  also  her  •'  Way  of  Perfection,"  translated  by 
David  Lewis  (191 1);  "A  Mediceval  Mystic,"  by  Earle 
Baillie,  being  the  life  of  John  Ruysbroeck,  whose  writings  are 
best  translated  by  Maeterlink.  Also  "  Christian  Mysticism," 
by  W.  R.  Inge,  an  excellent  essay,  though  too  much  emphasis  is 
laid  upon  the  shortcomings  of  the  mystics.  Hereof  are  a  few 
cups  from  a  well  of  pure  water ;  it  is  free  water  of  life — taste 
and  see. 


THE  HIGHER  HARMONY  87 

They  have  been  fertilizing  spirits,  openers  of 
sleeping  seeds,  and  those  who  study  them  look 
up  from  the  page  with  faces  aglow,  as  William 
Law  studied  Behmen,  as  Alexander  MacLaren 
lived  with  Tauler.  So  much  so,  that  it  may  be 
truly  said  that  no  man,  from  Augustine  to  Luther, 
from  Wesley  to  Phillips  Brooks,  has  ever  been  a 
great  prophetic  preacher  without  being  a  mystic, 
or  the  disciple  of  a  mystic.  Time  fails  me  to  tell 
how  the  mystical  theology — driven  from  the 
pulpit,  and  finding  refuge  in  hymns,  prayers,  and 
fireside  meditations — was  the  living  faith  of  the 
burghers  of  Germany  for  nearly  two  centuries  ; 
how  it  kept  alive  experimental  religion  of  a  pure 
kind,  how  it  inspired  the  early  German  and 
Flemish  artists — like  Van  Eyck,  whose  famous 
painting,  The  Adoration  of  the  Lainby  is  the 
reduction  to  colour  of  the  vision  of  a  mystic ; 
and  how  it  taught  Luther  himself  what  heart 
religion  really  was.  So  also  Wesley,  whose 
strange  "  warming  of  the  heart,"  which  set  Eng- 
land on  fire,  was  kindled  by  fellowship  with  a 
band  of  Moravian  mystics  ;  as  the  sweet  pietism 
of  Francke  and  Spener  rescued  the  Swedish 
church  from  a  barren,  stony  orthodoxy,  and  a 
dead  polemical  dogmatism.  In  our  own  age 
— encumbered  as  it  is  with  so  many  "blank 
misgivings,"  so  many  cloudy  sunsets  and  so  few 
glad  confident  dawns — the  sign  of  most  promise 
among  us  is   the  renewed  and  wide- spread  in- 


88  THE   UNITY   OF   FAITH 

terest  in  the  mystics,  which,  despite  a  too  fre- 
quent quest  after  fantastic  occultisms,  and  pseudo- 
psychisms,  betrays  a  deep  hunger  of  the  soul  for 
a  more  satisfying  experience  of  Unseen  Realities. 
Here,  in  the  mystic  tradition,  is  the  true 
apostolic  succession  of  the  spiritual  life,  unbroken 
by  the  transitions  of  theology  or  the  conflicts  of 
sects,  confident  and  forward-looking  amid  the 
mysteries  of  life.  It  is  authentic,  not  because  of 
any  hierarchy,  but  because  it  comes  to  us  through 
a  succession  of  apostolic  souls.  Otherwise  it 
would  be  hardly  more  than  a  legend,  though 
every  church  could  boast  an  unbroken  line  of 
teachers  whose  heads  had  been  blessed  by  the 
men  before  them.  Just  as  the  poet-laureates  of 
England  are  made  poets,  when  they  are  poets  at 
all,  not  by  edict  of  state,  but  by  the  divine  gift  of 
genius ;  so  the  teachers  of  faith  have  power  not 
by  virtue  of  rank  or  office,  but  by  experience  of 
things  eternal.  Such  an  experience,  when  il- 
lumined by  great  genius — whether  in  St.  Francis 
or  Fenelon,  Chalmers  or  Channing — places  a  man 
in  the  true  hierarchy  of  the  light-bringers  and 
way-showers  of  the  race.  For,  by  its  very  nature, 
authority  in  matters  of  faith  and  morals  rests  in 
God,  and  so  far  as  it  is  entrusted  to  men  is  not 
official  or  arbitrary,  but  spiritual  and  persuasive. 
To  some  of  us  the  Catholic  church  appeals  with 
overwhelming  authority,  not  through  its  hierarchy, 
nor   yet   through    its    pontiff,   but  through   the 


THE   HIGHER   HARMONY  89 

voices  of  its  seiints,  who  are  among  our  dearest 
teachers.  Its  thnikers  must  fight  their  way  up 
ill .  the  arena  of  philosophy ;  but  when  Santa 
Teresa  tells  us  of  her  hfe  of  prayer,  we  hsten  in  a 
different  mood,  if  so  be  that  we  may  learn  the 
path  to  the  Mount  of  Vision. 

Saints,  poets,  seers,  mystics  all — a  strange  and 
radiant  fellowship  they  make,  of  many  races, 
traditions,  and  creeds,  held  in  the  unity  of  the 
Life  of  the  Spirit.  They  speak  in  various 
tongues,  but  with  a  unison  of  tone  which  each 
understands,  a  language  neither  ancient  nor 
modern,  but  timeless,  eternal,  one.  Across  the 
ages  we  hear  Philo  saying,  •*  God  hath  breathed 
into  man  from  heaven  a  portion  of  His  own 
divinity."  Years  pass,  and  St.  Paul  speaks  of 
Christ  formed  within  us,  a  continuing  glory  both 
of  character  and  of  hope,  whom  to  know  aright 
is  life  everlasting.  Other  years  pass  and  Plotinus 
bears  witness  :  *'  The  wise  man  recognizes  the 
good  within  him  ;  this  he  develops  by  withdrawal 
into  the  holy  place  of  the  soul."  Bernard  of 
Clairvaux,  administrator  and  saint,  takes  up  the 
strain,  assuring  us  that  •'  It  is  in  the  spirit  that 
union  with  God  occurs  "  ;  while  Tauler  pauses  in 
his  humane  labours,  having  found  the  same 
secret :  "  This  revelation  must  take  place  in 
the  spirit,  for  God  is  Spirit."  Again  we  hear 
Madame  Guyon  testify,  confirming  the  word  of 
Santa   Teresa :      "  Accustom    yourself    to   seek 


90  THE   UNITY   OF   FAITH 

God  in  your  own  heart,  and  you  will  find  Him." 
So  the  witness  runs  through  the  years,  through 
Huss,  Luther,  Wesley,  Fox,  and  Bushnell,  as  be- 
fore it  had  come  down  through  Augustine,  St. 
Francis,  and  Savonarola.  At  last  the  voice  of 
Emerson  is  heard  speaking  in  our  own  land : 
"  Within  man  is  the  soul  of  the  holy,  the  wise 
silence,  the  universal  beauty " ;  and  Phillips 
Brooks,  standing  beside  the  pillar  in  Trinity 
Church,  sums  it  up  : 

"  Religion  instantly  becomes  irreligious  if  you 
carry  it  away  from  its  great  enveloping  truth  of 
the  mystic  union  of  God  and  man.  Mysticism 
is  the  heart  of  religion,  without  whose  ever-beat- 
ing hfe  the  hands  of  religion,  which  do  the 
work,  and  the  mind  of  religion  which  studies 
and  thinks,  fall  dead.  .  .  .  It  is  a  blessed 
thing  that  in  all  times  there  have  always  been 
men  to  whom  religion  has  not  presented  itself  as 
a  system  of  doctrine,  but  as  an  elemental  life 
in  which  the  soul  of  man  came  into  very  di- 
rect and  close  communion  with  the  soul  of  God. 
It  is  the  mystics  of  every  age  who  have  done 
most  to  blend  the  love  of  truth  and  the  love  of 
man  within  the  love  of  God,  and  so  to  keep  alive 
or  restore  a  healthy  tolerance."  * 

>"  Essays  and  Addresses,"  by  Phillips  Brooks  ( 1895). 


IV 

THE  PROSE  OF  FAITH 

IN  the  "  Life  of  Dante,"  by  Boccalos,  we  are 
told  that  "  theology  is  God's  poetry."  It 
may  be  so ;  but  when  one  studies  the  his- 
tory of  dogma,  its  hidden  and  unnoted  factors, 
and  the  materials  of  which  it  is  composed,  one 
feels  like  modifying  the  saying  of  the  great  poet. 
Religion  is  indeed  divine  poetry — ••  poetry  be- 
lieved in,"  as  Dean  Everett  used  to  say — but 
theology,  for  the  most  part,  is  very  human  prose, 
or  at  least  an  imperfect  translation  of  the  divine 
music.  Though  they  bore  the  same  name,  held 
the  same  faith,  and  used  the  same  vocabulary, 
what  a  gulf  divided  the  second  Christian  century 
from  the  days  of  Jesus  !  No  sooner  did  Chris- 
tianity step  upon  Greek  soil  than  it  was  taken 
up  by  alert  and  eager  minds,  mixed  with  the 
fag-ends  of  decaying  philosophy,  and  changed 
into  something  seemingly  utterly  alien  to  the 
mind  of  the  Master.  One  familiar  with  the  the- 
ologic  outlook  at  the  middle  of  the  second 
century,  as  we  have  it  reflected  later  in  the  pages 
of  Irenseus  and  TertuUian,  knows  that  it  was  a 

91 


92  THE   UNITY   OF   FAITH 

bewildering   maze,  in  which  the  poetry  of  Jesus 
had  become  an  uneven  and  jangling  prose. 

No  good  purpose  would  be  served  by  an  at- 
tempt to  tread  that  labyrinth  here,  least  of  all 
without  a  torch  and  a  guide.  All  along  the 
error  has  been  a  failure  to  realize  that  our  dog- 
mas, at  best,  are  but  picture-conceptions  of  reali- 
ties so  great  that  all  men  are  one  in  their  little- 
ness— an  error  due,  perhaps,  to  our  intellectual 
conceit  which  tends  to  assume  that  its  analy- 
sis, and  therefore  its  explanation,  is  complete. 
Whereas,  if  we  could  once  be  made  aware  that 
the  truth  includes  what  all  of  us  perceive,  and 
much  more  unguessed  by  any  of  us — that  our 
dogmas,  as  Matthew  Arnold  said,  are  only  so 
many  words  thrown  out  rtt  a  vast  reality — each 
would  seek,  humbly  and  eagerly,  to  know  what 
truth  the  other  has  discovered,  in  the  hope  of 
attaining  to  a  larger  faith.  It  has  been  said 
that  the  supreme  gift  of  Cardinal  Newman — who 
was  a  miracle  of  intellectual  delicacy  joined  with 
an  austere  and  unearthly  spirituality — was  an  in- 
tellect which  discerned  the  inadequacy  of  words, 
ideas,  or  systems  when  confronted  with  the  real- 
ities which  they  seek  to  body  forth.  His  insight 
is  best  exhibited,  perhaps,  in  a  passage  from  his 
"  Apologia^  remarkable  alike  for  its  style  and  for 
its  sweep  and  grasp.     Thus  : 

"  The  broad  philosophy  of  Clement  and  Origen 
carried  me  away.     Some  portions  of  their  teach- 


THE   PROSE   OF   FAITH  93 

ing,  magnificent  in  themselves,  came  like  music 
to  my  inward  ear.  These  were  based  on  the 
mystical  or  sacramental  principle.  Nature  was 
a  parable :  Scripture  was  an  allegory :  pagan 
literature,  philosophy,  and  mythology,  properly 
understood,  were  but  a  preparation  for  the  Gos- 
pel. The  Greek  poets  and  sages  were  in  a 
certain  sense  prophets ;  for  '  thoughts  beyond 
their  thoughts  to  those  high  bards  were  given.' 
In  the  fullness  of  time  both  Judaism  and  pagan- 
ism came  to  nought.  And  thus  room  Wcis  made 
for  the  anticipation  of  further  and  deeper  disclo- 
sures, of  truths  still  under  the  veil  of  the  letter, 
and  in  their  season  to  be  revealed.  The  visible 
world  still  remains  without  its  divine  interpreta- 
tion ;  Holy  Church,  in  her  sacraments  and  her 
hierarchical  appointments,  will  remain,  even  to 
the  end  of  the  world,  after  all  but  a  symbol  of 
those  heavenly  facts  which  fill  eternity.  Her 
mysteries  are  but  the  expression  in  human  lan- 
guage of  truths  to  which  the  human  mind  is 
unequal."  * 

So  luminous  a  passage  persuades  while  it  ex- 
emplifies the  doctrine  which  it  recommends — the 
doctrine,  that  is,  that  doctrines  themselves  are 
but  symbols ;  that  theology  is  at  once  an  alle- 
gory and  an  act  of  faith  ;  that  it  is  figurative  be- 
cause it  seizes  on  a  hidden  reality,  not  otherwise 

"^  ^*  Apologia  Pro    Vita    Sua,"  by   J.  H.  Newman,  Chap.  I 
(1865). 


94  THE  UNITY   OF  FAITH 

to  be  detained.  It  was  an  illuminating  insight, 
particularly  so  in  the  midst  of  what  Dean  Church 
called  the  enormous  irruption  into  the  world  of 
modern  thought  of  the  unknown  and  the  un- 
knowable. Also,  it  helps  to  account  for  the  em- 
barrassment which  has  always  beset  Christian 
apologists,  when  they  have  been  challenged  to 
give  a  reason  for  their  faith  in  the  court  of  logic. 
As  Newman  pointed  out,  such  reasons  as  may  be 
formally  adduced  are  rather  specimens  and  sym- 
bols of  the  real  reasons  than  those  reasons  them- 
selves. Defenders  of  the  faith  select,  of  neces- 
sity, not  the  truest,  the  highest,  the  most  sacred 
reasons  for  belief,  but  such  as  best  admit  of  being 
exhibited  in  argument ;  and  these  are  rarely,  per- 
haps never,  the  real  reasons  in  the  case  of  a  re- 
ligious man/  Nor  does  this  hand  the  case  over 
to  the  agnostic,  who  hastens  to  agree  that  dog- 
mas are  but  words,  the  Bible  a  book  of  meta- 
phors, and  religion  an  echo  of  our  own  voice  in 
*'  the  dark  night  of  the  soul."  For  a  sense  of 
humour,  if  nothing  else,  should  protect  a  man 
from  the  dogma  that  the  human  mind,  finite  in 
all  things,  is  infinite  in  its  ignorance.  To  that 
dogma  Newman  opposed,  and  rightly  so,  the  in- 
ner fact  too  deep  for  speech,  which,  confirmed 
by  the  Mystic  Vision  and  the  devout  life  of  ages, 
is  the  surest  possession  of  the  race. 

If  we  allow  so  much,  consequences  of  an  inter- 
1"  Cardinal  Newman,"  by  "William  Barry,  Chap.  V  (I904), 


THE  PROSE  OF  FAITH  95 

esting  kind  seem  to  follow.  At  first  glance  the- 
ology is  apparently  removed  from  among  the 
sciences  and  placed  in  the  domain  of  the  arts ; 
but  that  need  not  be  regretted.  This  at  least  is 
true :  we  are  here  given  a  key  to  the  deeper  unity 
of  experience  and  life  beneath  diversities  of  tem- 
perament and  every  variety  of  intellectual  sym- 
bolism. If  we  take  the  dogmas  of  Christian 
theology  as  symbolic  pictures,  they  are  seen  to 
be  efforts  of  the  Church  at  various  periods,  and 
of  certain  types  of  mind  in  every  period,  to  ex- 
press spiritual  truth  in  such  imaginative  intellec- 
tual forms  as  were  best  suited  to  their  needs. 
Thus  a  truth  may  find  expression  in  different 
dogmas,  just  as  any  thought  may  be  uttered  in 
different  languages  by  phrases  that  sound  very 
unlike,  and  yet  mean  the  same  thing.  Even  the 
same  truth,  as  Lowell  shows  in  his  poem  on  Am- 
brosBy  may  in  different  garb  have  power  over 
other  minds,  who  actually  deny  that  truth  as  we 
state  it  in  our  words.  Some  dogmas  seem  irra- 
tional and  crude,  and  we  are  prone  to  deny  not 
only  their  clumsy  form,  but  also  the  spiritual 
truths  which  they  are  trying  to  utter,  because 
we  think  of  the  surface  intellectual  meaning  only, 
and  do  not  apprehend  the  truths  underlying  or 
feel  their  power.  What  we  have  always  to  re- 
member is  that  the  Truth  is  greater  than  all  sym- 
bols, deeper  than  all  dogmas,  and  that,  as  George 
Eliot  said,  "  the  divine  life  moves  underneath  the 


96  THE   UNITY   OF   FAITH 

thickest  ice  of  theory."  And,  after  all,  it  is  that 
deep  inner  life  of  the  soul,  flowing  with  strong 
current  in  its  hidden  bed,  which  at  last  "  winds 
somewhere  safe  to  sea." 

No  better  example  of  the  difference  between 
religion  and  theology  ^  can  be  found  than  in  the 
successive  dogmas  of  the  Cross  which  have  fol- 
lowed each  other  through  the  Christian  years. 
To-day  men  are  sometimes  accused  of  tampering 
with  the  doctrine  of  the  atonement,  and  it  is  held 
to  be  a  vital  offense,  but  one  may  well  ask, 
*•  Which  doctrine  ?  "  It  has  been  truly  said  that 
if  men  are  saved  or  lost  by  their  correct  or  incor- 
rect views  of  this  truth,  then  whole  ages  of  the 
Church  are  clearly  past  praying  for.  One  view, 
wliich  held  the  ground  for  almost  a  thousand 
years,  was  that  the  death  of  Christ  was  a  ransom 

^  It  need  hardly  be  said  that  this  is  not  meant  to  depreciate,  in 
any  way,  the  definitions  and  distinctions  of  historic  Christian 
theology.  \Ve  must  liiink  and  define;  we  must  interpret  and 
justify  to  the  intellect  the  convictions  of  the  heart,  and  put  our 
religious  persuasions  into  the  best  intellectual  shape  we  can. 
The  mystics  err  in  this  respect,  perhaps  through  a  sense  of  the 
incffableness  of  truth  and  the  inadequacy  of  language  (''Mys- 
ticism," by  Evelyn  Underhill,  1911).  As  Thomas  Erskine  of 
Linlathen  remarked:  "  I  feel  self-condemned  in  occupying  my 
mind  in  the  labour  of  constructing  the  intellectual  shape  of  re- 
ligion when  I  could  be  more  profitably  employed  in  actually 
walking  with  God."  On  the  other  hand,  as  Kant  said  of 
philosophy,  theology  does  not  discover  truth,  but  simi)ly  ar- 
ranges the  truth  explored  by  experience  ;  and  is  thus  of  second- 
ary importance. 


THE   PROSE  OF  FAITH  97 

paid  to  the  devil,  and  that  His  resurrection  was 
a  kind  of  trick  by  which  Satan  was  finally  de- 
frauded. Think  of  a  man  like  Ambrose  of  Milan, 
one  of  the  noblest  and  sweetest  souls  of  the 
fourth  century  and  the  spiritual  father  of  Augus- 
tine, beinof  able  to  write  a  sentence  hke  this  : 
*'  It  was  necessary  in  order  that  this  fraud  should 
be  carried  out  upon  the  devil  that  the  Lord  Jesus 
should  take  a  body  ! "  We  can  hardly  imagine 
a  theology  of  the  Cross  more  grotesque  and  un- 
thinkable ,  yet  no  one  amongst  us  knows  more 
effectually  than  did  that  ancient  saint  the  religion 
of  the  Cross,  as  felt  in  the  soul  and  realized  in 
life.  One  cannot  read  his  works  without  feeling 
that  the  root  of  the  matter  was  in  him,  despite 
the  crude  intellectual  imagery  of  his  day. 

So  it  is  with  the  theory  of  Anslem,  in  his 
"Cur  Deus  Homo'' — a  theory  which,  strangely 
enough,  was  in  its  main  features  adopted  and 
taught  by  the  Reformation  leaders.  He  re- 
garded Christ  as  having,  by  His  passion  and 
death,  paid  in  suffering  the  exact  equivalent  of 
human  guilt,  and  thereby  satisfying  the  claims  of 
divine  justice  :  which,  as  Augustine  had  pointed 
out  before,  was  not  a  doctrine  of  grace,  but  a 
negation  of  grace.  No  one  now  attacks  this 
dogma  with  laboured  argument,  and  few  are  left 
to  defend  it.  Like  other  clumsy  ideas,  it  has 
suffered  the  most  terrible  of  all  refutations — the 
moral   sense   of    mankind   has    outgrown   it :   a 


98  THE  UNITY  OF  FAITH 

benign  change  having  come  over  the  race  render- 
ing obsolete  much  both  of  the  faiths  and  fears  of 
former  times.  Yet  he  is  a  poor  interpreter,  and 
no  poet  at  all,  who  does  not  see  that  those  crude 
dogmas,  modified  by  the  forms  of  Roman  law 
and  the  feudal  system,  were  striving  to  give  intel- 
lectual shape  to  the  same  ineffable  truth  which 
we  feel  to-day,  and  cannot  utter.  It  towers 
above  all  theory,  from  Anslem  to  Bushnell,  and 
we  may  well  be  dumb  before  it,  smitten  mute 
where  speech  is  vain,  yet  softened,  thrilled,  and 
redeemed  by  a  reality  which  we  feel  and  know, 
but  can  in  nowise  define  or  explain. 

So  of  all  our  dogmas.  They  are  but  picture- 
conceptions  of  spiritual  truth,  useful  and  often 
beautiful,  but  they  ought  not  to  be  made  tests  of 
fellowship,  much  less  occasions  for  marring  that 
charity  without  which  the  most  perfect  theology 
is  nothing.  In  the  olden  time  one  man  formu- 
lated his  faith  into  a  series  of  dogmas,  and  called 
it  the  truth.  Another  man  did  the  same  thing ; 
then  the  two  began  to  hate  each  other  with  an 
unholy  hatred,  and  there  is  an  epitome  of  some 
of  the  blackest  chapters  in  history.  All  of  which 
admonishes  us,  once  more,  that  in  every  form  of 
faith  there  is  some  truth  which  can  be  seen, 
perhaps,  from  no  other  angle,  and  that  the  Truth 
is  greater  than  all  dogmas.  We,  who  have  such 
a  rich  inheritance  of  duty  and  hope  in  common, 
have  enough  to  do  to  live  kindly  among  our- 


THE  PROSE  OF  FAITH  99 

selves,  without  quarrelling  about  the  prose  of 
faith,  least  of  all  when  its  lofty  and  sustaining 
poetry  is  the  treasure  of  each. 

One  theology  goeth  and  another  theology 
Cometh,  each  speaking  the  language  of  its  day, 
but  the  faith  abides  and  the  divine  life  in  the 
soul  of  man  moves  on.  Forever  the  human  race 
reaches  out  its  hands  and  shapes  some  system, 
some  creed,  and  declares  it  to  be  final,  and  be- 
hold !  something  flowing  and  eternal  in  the  race 
itself  presently  splits  that  creed  to  pieces.  Other 
and  nobler  systems  are  built,  each  shutting  us 
from  heaven  "  with  a  dome  more  vast,"  but  they 
in  their  turn  suffer  a  like  fate,  as  man  learns  to 
read  here  a  hne  and  there  a  stanza  of  "  that  flow- 
ing music  which  is  life."  Always  the  gain  of 
truth  is  richer ;  always  the  outlook  is  larger,  and 
the  vista  longer.  Thus  the  living  faith  by  which 
men  live  grows  from  more  to  more,  and  more  of 
reverence  and  charity  within  us  dwell,  as  mind 
and  soul,  ^according  well,  make  one  music  as 
before,  but  vaster. 

*'  Our  little  systems  have  their  day, 

They  have  their  day  and  cease  to  be : 
They  are  but  broken  lights  of  Thee, 
And  Thou,  O  Lord,  art  more  than  they." 


1 


V 

TRUTH  FOR  TO-DAY 

"^RUTH  is  a  marvellous  thing.  It  can 
fill  our  eyes  with  tears  and  our  hearts 
with  joy ;  it  can  make  us  die  for  it ;  but 
once  we  attempt  to  imprison  it  in  a  system,  it 
eludes  us.  Where  men  fail  is  not  in  seeking  to 
formulate  truth,  as  they  must  do  if  they  are  to 
think  at  all,  but  in  striving  for  finality ;  *  either 
mistaking  a  segment  for  the  whole,  or  else  trying 
to  close  the  circle.  As  Flaubert  said,  the  great- 
est geniuses  never  conclude :  God  alone  may  do 
that.  Whether  from  the  limits  of  human  think- 
ing or  from  the  profundity  of  divine  things,  the 
great  difficulties  remain,  and  our  solutions  of 
them   are   not   final.     Faith   in   "  the   gospel   of 

1  "  The  Final  Faith,"  by  W.  D.  Mackensie  (1910).  Surely  the 
final  faith,  if  it  ever  appears,  will  be  less  intricate  than  the 
system  of  dogma  here  set  forth,  which  involves  elaborate  ex- 
plication, theory,  and  argument.  Not  content  with  faith  as  a 
g-frai  perception, — a  consensus  of  the  insight,  experience  and 
aspiration  of  all  devout  men, — the  author  gives  us  a  system, 
noble  indeed  but  still  a  system,  much  of  which  is  still  in  debate. 
A  final  faith  must  be  able  to  live  in  new  and  changed  times, 
must  be  compatible  with  vast  and  unimagined  developments  of 
thought  and  life,  and  the  "  final  faith  "  here  proposed  does  not 
seem  to  meet  the  test. 

100 


TRUTH   FOR  TO-DAY  lOI 

going  on,"  too  reverent  of  God  and  too  proud 
of  the  spirit  of  man  to  settle  everything,  is  our 
true  attitude,  with  no  ambition  but  to  know- 
more  truth,  and  richer. 

In  his  **  Foundations  of  Behef,"  Arthur  Bal- 
four discusses  the  question  as  to  whether  there 
can  be  such  a  thing  as  a  synthetic  theology.  He 
concludes  that  no  man  can  live  long  enough  to 
acquire,  even  if  he  could  manipulate,  the  intel- 
lectual apparatus  necessary  for  such  an  under- 
taking. Nor  do  we  yet  need  such  a  Messiah  of 
theology,  though  the  reconstruction  of  religious 
thought  is  now  perhaps  sufficiently  advanced  to 
permit  a  consensus  of  positive  and  united  em- 
phasis upon  the  great  realities  of  faith  about 
which  we  seem  able,  at  last,  to  agree.  While 
there  is  always  a  demand  for  fresh,  original  in- 
sight, it  seems  clear  that  the  chief  gain  in  the 
near  future  will  come,  rather,  through  the  larger 
fellowship  towards  which  we  are  tending.  The 
profound  change  of  heart  now  taking  place 
everywhere,  in  all  sects,  through  interchange  of 
thought,  courtesy,  and  personal  touch,  will  mean 
the  bringing  together  of  truths  long  held  apart, 
and  must  result,  it  would  seem,  in  a  more  inclu- 
sive vision. 

An  example  in  point  is  the  old  contention,  so 
bitterly  debated,  as  to  the  person  of  Christ  and 
His  place  in  the  thought  and  faith  of  the  race. 
Carlyle  said  truly  that  if  Arius  had  won,  Chris- 


I02  THE  UNITY  OF  FAITH 

tianity  would  have  dwindled  into  a  legend ;  for 
when  Athanasius  stood  against  the  world  he  was 
fighting  for  that  which  is  most  distinctive  and 
vital  in  Christian  faith.  The  religious  interest  of 
that  day  centred,  not  in  the  dogma  of  the  trinity, 
but  in  the  question  of  the  future  life  of  the  soul ; 
and  if  the  debate  found  focus  about  the  person  of 
Christ,  it  was  because  all  saw  that  the  fate  of  our 
race  is  bound  up  with  Him.  Athanasius  stood 
for  the  whole  truth — that  Christ  was  real  God 
and  real  man  joined,  a  revelation  of  what  God  is, 
of  what  man  is,  and  of  what  their  life  together 
may  be.  Mankind,  he  held,  is  perfected  in 
Christ  and  restored,  as  it  was  made  in  the  begin- 
ning, with  greater  grace.  Since  in  Christ  hu- 
manity was  joined  with  deity,  man  must  be  akin 
to  God,  and  his  hope  of  a  life  beyond  the  grave 
is  not  in  vain. 

The  Church  has  fought  valiantly  for  its  faith  in 
the  deity  of  Christ,  and  rightly  so,  but  that  was 
only  one-half  of  the  truth  as  Athanasius  saw  it. 
The  other  half  was  neglected,  if  not  forgotten, 
along  with  the  Arian  dogma  that  God  and  man 
are  so  utterly  apart  and  distinct  that  a  plastic 
medium  is  needed  to  bridge  the  chasm  between 
them — a  conception  which,  banished  from  the 
creeds,  took  refuge  in  the  institutions  of  the 
mediaeval  church.  Channing,  Emerson  and  Mar- 
tineau  brought  forward  the  truth  of  the  divinity 
of  man,  so  long  overlooked,  and  for  so  doing  we 


TRUTH  FOR  TO-DAY  103 

owe  them  honour.  What  should  follow  from 
this  reunion  of  truths  so  sadly  estranged  is  a  vi- 
sion of  a  race  consubstantial  with  God,  issuing 
in  a  sincere  confession  of  the  deity  of  Christ  and 
the  deity  of  man.  These  two  truths  are  not  con- 
tradictory, but  one.  They  stand  or  fall  together, 
and  if  we  are  to  have  a  complete  Christianity  we 
must  hold  both. 

Of  course,  such  a  vision  of  truth  must  be 
more  than  an  achievement  of  the  intellect,  more 
than  an  adventure  in  theory,  else  it  will  result  in 
a  discipHne  in  confusion.  It  must  be  a  fruit  of 
experience  in  the  moral  process  of  living,  a  real- 
ity authenticating  itself  in  the  final  test  amid  the 
trial,  tears,  and  triumph  of  righteous  and  devout 
souls.  Faith  of  any  kind  is  valid  only  in  so  far 
as  it  resolves  itself  into  character  and  the  ideal 
forces  that  shape  character,  making  us  such  men 
as  without  it  we  could  not  be.  So  tested,  faith 
in  Christ  is  more  than  faith  in  His  deity,  more 
than  the  faith  that  He  once  lived,  died  and  rose 
again,  and  that  He  still  lives  among  men.  One 
may  believe  all  that  as  a  theory  and  remain  a 
slave  to  greed  and  passion.  No  ;  it  is  actually  to 
trust  and  follow  the  awful  yet  gracious  and  ever- 
living  God  who  is  in  Christ  and  in  ourselves,  to 
love  and  obey  whom,  at  whatever  cost,  is  the 
way  of  life.  With  such  an  experience  we  read 
the  story  of  Jesus  in  the  days  of  His  flesh  in  a 
new  light  and  with  a  new  sense  of  reality.     In- 


I04  THE   UNITY   OF   FAITH 

Stead  of  being  a  record  of  long  ago,  we  become 
wayfarers  with  Him  in  the  beauty  and  sorrow, 
the  joy  and  awe  of  His  hfe,  and  the  Gospels  seem 
but  "  the  broken  memories  of  days  He  walked 
with  us."  Then  we  serve  our  fellow  souls  with  a 
new  zest,  knowing  that  there  is  something  divine 
in  every  man,  no  matter  how  sodden  or  sin-be- 
spattered he  may  be,  if  we  can  but  reach  it.  Nor 
can  we  ever  reach  it  save  through  the  divine 
within  ourselves,  mediated  through  a  tender,  tact- 
ful human  ministry. 

After  this  manner  faith  may  be  not  only  unified, 
but  greatly  enriched,  when  it  is  studied  as  it 
stands  in  the  service  of  life.  Some  would  have 
us  think  that  religious  truth  is  thus  growing  out 
of  all  recognition,  like  the  letters  cut  in  the 
bark  of  a  young  tree.  Others  wonder  how,  if  this 
be  true,  there  can  be  any  fixed  standard  or  crite- 
rion of  that  growth.  A  building  may  grow,  but 
if  the  building  materials  also  grow,  the  results 
would  seem  to  be  like  those  of  the  croquet-party 
in  "  Alice's  Adventures  in  Wonderland."  On 
the  other  side,  it  may  be  said  that  the  wonder- 
land has  been  here  a  long  time,  and  that  the 
ancients  bequeathed  to  us  some  very  profound 
and  revealing  insights.  No  doubt  we  know  more 
than  our  fathers  knew  about  the  world,  its  laws 
and  forces  ;  but  few  will  affirm  that  we  surpass, 
if  indeed  we  equal,  Dante,  Fenelon  or  St.  Francis 
in  our  acquaintance  with  divine  realities.     One 


TRUTH   FOR   TO-DAY  I05 

reads  the  **  Confessions  "  of  St.  Augustine  and 
finds  there  not  only  a  splendour  of  genius,  and 
an  exquisite  literary  grace,  but  a  profound  and 
passionate  religious  life  not  easy  to  discover  in  our 
laughing  and  logical  age.  Even  Newman,  who 
was  a  citizen  of  eternity,  lived  as  a  pilgrim  and  a 
stranger  among  us.* 

Ages  differ,  and  the  chief  difference  between 
our  age  and  that  of  St.  Francis  would  seem  to  be 
that  \Ve  have  more  light  from  without  than  the  an- 
cient m3^stic,  and  less  from  within.  Surely  no  man 
ever  brought  together  two  things  more  unlike 
than  Masterman  did  when  he  wrote  his  essay  on 
*'  Chicago  and  Francis,^' — the  smoky  city,  with 
its  medley  of  races  and  its  babel  of  voices,  and 
the  gentle  saint  who  preached  poverty  and  talked 
to  the  doves.^  It  is  a  far  cry  from  State  Street, 
with  its  din  and  jam,  to  the  unclouded  days  and 
hot  nights  of  Umbria,  when  St.  Francis  lived  his 
life  of  beauty  and  pity.  That  was  an  age  of  art, 
of  poetry,  of  beautiful  and  strange  personalities, 
over  whose  long,  still  days  hung  an  air  of 
mystery  :  an  age,  also,  of  rough  brutality,  vocal 
with  violence  and  misery,  when,  in  the  Salimbene 
picture  of  the  scene,  wolves  howled  under  the 

1  A  stranger,  it  now  seems,  even  in  the  church  in  which  he 
sought  his  home,  as  we  learn  from  the  new  "  Life  of  Newman," 
by  Wilfred  Ward  (1911),  two  rich  volumes  made  up,  for  the 
most  part,  of  letters  and  diaries  of  the  Roman  period. 

2"  In  Peril  of  Change,"  by  C.  F.  G.  Masterman  (1905). 


I06  THE  UNITY  OF  FAITH 

walls  of  Italian  towns  and  at  night  entered 
and  devoured  men.  There  was  a  blithe  beauty 
in  those  sons  of  St.  Francis  who,  though  pilgrims 
seeking  a  country,  went  singing  through  the 
world,  cheered  by  an  abiding  vision  of  the  Un- 
seen. All  now  is  changed,  and  how  different  the 
picture  of  the  world  as  a  factory,  with  its  gray 
smoke-cloud  of  puffing  industrialism,  from  the 
world  as  a  cloister. 

"  There  will  never  be  any  saints  in  America," 
said  the  heroine  of  a  recent  novel  who  visited 
Assisi,  and  whose  only  wonder  was  that  St.  Francis 
and  St.  Claire  never  married. 

"  No,  no ! "  was  the  reply,  "  instead  of  St. 
Francis  preaching  poverty,  we  shall,  maybe, 
have  men  who  will  lessen  poverty,  and  make  the 
world  a  more  comfortable  place." 

Not  simply  a  more  comfortable  place,  let  us 
hope,  but  a  theatre  for  the  working  out  of  great 
human  ideals  of  liberty,  justice  and  fraternity ;  a 
world  filling  up  with  those  "  large,  eternal 
fellows  "  who  do  the  thing  that  needs  to  be  done 
for  the  joy  of  doing  it.  To-day  men  beheve — 
and,  verily,  they  do  well — that  poverty,  disease, 
crime,  war,  ennui,  and  numberless  other  evils, 
spawn  of  ignorance,  need  not  and  must  not  be. 
They  are  building  for  utility — taming  forces, 
cleansing  swamps,  moving  mountains,  mobilizing 
the  men  of  good-will,  driving  the  piles  for  a  new 
and  better  order  of  society  ;  and  when  this  work 


TRUTH  FOR  TO-DAY  107 

is  done,  or  rather  in  the  doing  of  it,  there  will  be 
born  a  new  art,  a  new  humanism,  and  a  larger 
faith.  When  we  leave  the  Bunyan  allegory  and 
come  to  the  Hawthorne  story  of  the  *•  Celestial 
Railway,"  we  find  a  bridge  spanning  the  Slough 
of  Despond,  and  Vanity  Fair  is  a  salubrious 
village  in  which  passengers  stop  off  for  a  few 
days.  Not  only  is  the  whole  tone  of  our  social 
life  higher  and  purer,  but  great  social  wrongs, 
overlooked  in  the  age  of  Bunyan,  rise  up  before 
us  in  all  their  horror.  As  soon  as  the  forces  of 
the  New  Reformation  have  grown  strong  enough, 
it  is  believed  that  Christian  faith  and  modern 
science  will  unite  to  quicken  the  heart  and  mind 
of  humanity,  and  lift  it,  on  a  wave  of  common 
joy  and  hope,  into  a  nobler  life. 

Still,  all  must  feel  that  something  fine  and 
precious  has  gone  out  of  our  hfe,  as  though  a 
sweet  note  had  '<  trembled  away  into  silence." 
We  have  come  to  a  kinder  knowledge  of  man, 
and,  alas !  to  what  can  only  be  described  as  a 
kinder  ignorance  of  God.  There  was  something 
in  the  soul  of  St.  Francis — a  fellowship  with  God, 
a  sense  of  the  Unseen,  issuing  in  a  vision  of  the 
world  as  love  and  comradeship — more  precious 
by  far  than  all  the  gold  in  all  the  marble  hills. 
We  need  to  unite  the  passionate  religious  faith  of 
a  Tauler,  or  a  Wesley,  with  the  practical  activity 
of  our  day — a  blend  of  the  "  holy  stillness  "  of 
Christina  Rossetti  and  the  ardent  humanitarian- 


Io8  THE  UNITY   OF  FAITH 

ism  which  made  EHzabeth  Browning  a  prophetess 
of  purity,  piety,  and  pity.  There  is  need  of  a 
new  •'  Iinitatio  ChrisH,"  such,  perhaps,  as  Ben- 
jamin Jowett  projected,  whereof  we  read  in  his 
"  Life  and  Letters  " — a  •'  new  Thomas  a  Kempis, 
going  as  deeply  into  the  foundations  of  hfe, 
and  yet  not  revolting  the  common  sense  of  the 
twentieth  century,"  combining,  '*  in  a  manual  of 
piety,  religious  fervour  with  perfect  good  sense 
and  knowledge  of  the  world."  It  is  not  a  new 
religion  that  we  need,  but  religion  renewed ;  the 
old  faith  with  larger  realizations  and  wider  appli- 
cations to  these  new  and  changed  times — but  still 
the  same  Gospel  that  stirred  the  soul  of  Luther, 
and  the  same  Spirit  that  whispered  about  the 
heart  of  St.  Francis  when  he  bowed  in  prayer. 

Life  must  come  before  theology,  now  as  at  the 
beginning,  as  Rudolf  Eucken  is  telling  us  with 
so  much  insight  and  eloquence.  When  Edward 
Irving  began  his  ministry  in  Glasgow,  well-nigh 
ninety  years  ago,  he  resolved  to  <•  demonstrate  a 
higher  style  of  Christianity — something  more 
magnanimous,  more  heroical  than  this  age  is 
accustomed  to."  This  lesson  is  for  us — a  higher 
style  of  Christianity  is  more  than  ever  our  need. 
Let  us  give  ourselves  to  it,  nor  think  it  too  great 
an  achievement,  interpreting  that  we  do  know  in 
the  language  of  our  age,  as  the  teachers  of  the 
past  spoke  for  God  to  their  vanished  times. 


The  Culture  of  the  Soul 


What  is  personality  ?  How  is  it  con- 
stituted ?  "What  power  have  we  to 
modify,  enlarge,  elevate  and  expand  it  ? 


THE  SECRET  OF  POWER 

I 

ONE  charm  of  the  hfe  of  Jesus,  as  we 
read  it  in  the  Gospels,  is  its  graphic 
though  meagre  detail,  its  exquisite  brief 
touches  of  sidelight  and  colour.  Few  scenes  in 
that  life  are  more  vivid,  for  example,  than  the 
account  of  His  first  return  to  Nazareth,  as  given 
by  the  evangelist  Luke.  On  a  Sabbath  day, 
when  He  wends  His  way  to  the  synagogue,  the 
fact  is  recalled  that  this  was  His  custom.  News 
of  His  works  in  other  places  had  been  noised 
abroad,  and  those  who  had  known  Him  as  a 
youth  were  gathered  to  see  and  hear  Him. 
When  He  stands  up  to  read,  and  the  Book  is 
given  to  Him,  we  see  Him  unrolling  the  page 
until  He  *•  finds  the  place  " ;  and  when  He  has 
finished,  again  we  see  Him  close  the  roll,  stretch- 
ing out  His  hand  to  give  it  to  an  attendant,  and 
sitting  down.  We  feel  the  breathless  expecta- 
tion, when  "  the  eyes  of  all  that  were  in  the 
synagogue  were  fastened  on  Him." 

Whether  the  writer  himself  was  present,  or  it 
was  told  him  by  some  one  else  who  was  present, 
the  narrative  bears  all  the  marks  of  the  recollec- 

III 


112  THE  CULTURE  OF  THE  SOUL 

tion  of  an  eye-witness.  Not  otherwise  could  it 
have  reproduced  the  very  atmosphere  of  the  scene, 
the  Teacher  with  His  grave  dignity  of  intense 
stiUness,  and  the  mingled  curiosity  and  criticism 
of  His  hearers.  The  incident  suggests  many 
things,  and  among  them  that,  in  the  simple  act 
of  opening  and  closing  a  book,  the  manner  of 
the  Master  had  about  it  something  personal, 
unique,  and  unforgettable.  Here,  evidently,  was 
one  man  who,  in  recalling  that  Sabbath  morning 
scene— it  may  have  been  twenty  or  thirty  years 
after — could  not  blot  out  of  memory  the  appear- 
ance and  bearing  of  Jesus  as  He  opened,  and 
again  as  He  closed,  the  book  of  prophecy. 
Something  in  His  manner,  it  may  have  been 
only  the  simple  majesty  and  grace  of  His  move- 
ment— or  it  may  have  been  the  air  of  finality  with 
which  He  closed  the  scroll  of  prophecy  of  which 
He  was  the  fulfillment — left  an  unfading  image. 

It  is  the  privilege  of  personality  to  make  the 
smallest  things  memorable,  and  the  life  of  Jesus 
is  rich  in  examples  of  this  kind.  In  the  greatest 
history  in  the  world  the  writers  pause  to  say  that 
He  who  made  that  history  stooped  to  take  a 
little  child  in  His  arms ;  that  He  turned  when 
held  by  violent  hands,  and  looked  at  Peter ;  that 
He  made  as  though  He  would  have  gone  further 
one  solemn  eventide.  These  are  not  intrusions 
on  an  otherwise  exquisite  narrative,  nor  do  they 
impair  the  majesty  of  that  incomparable  record. 


THE  SECRET  OF  POWER  II3 

Rather  do  they  partake  of  its  essential  dignity 
and  beauty,  as  cloudlets  gather  and  are  transfig- 
ured by  the  sunset  splendour.  No  wonder 
Robert  Browning  saw  in  these  little  touches,  at 
once  so  graceful  and  so  artless — wherein  a  great 
soul  made  the  commonplace  unique,  because  He 
was  unique — so  many  signatures  of  the  authen- 
ticity of  the  record.  Such  strokes,  so  deft  and 
so  revealing,  and  withal  so  natural,  are  beyond 
the  skill  of  art,  much  less  of  artifice. 

The  personality  of  Jesus  impressed  itself  indel- 
ibly upon  every  act  of  His  life,  and  He  did  all 
things,  whether  great  or  small,  with  a  certain 
calm  and  grave  completeness.  When  He  called 
back  the  daughter  of  Jairus  from  the  dead,  and 
felt  her  hand  grow  warm  in  His  palm,  He  did 
not  forget,  while  all  around  amazement  reigned, 
to  remind  her  mother  that  a  child,  a-journeying 
so,  is  hungry,  and  that  she  must  be  a  mother 
still.  His  smallest  act,  which  in  any  other  biog- 
raphy would  have  dropped  out  of  the  history,  is 
.clothed  with  a  nameless  beauty,  as  elusive  and 
uncapturable  as  it  is  arresting  and  irresistible. 
If  He  plucked  a  lily  of  the  field,  it  became  an 
emblem  of  the  loving  care  of  God ;  and  if  He 
closed  a  Book,  He  closed  it  as  never  man  had 
closed  it  before.  And  by  a  strange  literary  mys- 
tery, His  words,  coming  to  us  afar,  have  about 
them  the  very  quality  of  Him  who  uttered  tliem, 
as   though  the  fragrance  of  His  spirit  clung  to 


114         THE  CULTURE  OF  THE  SOUL 

them ;  and  that  is  why  they  unlock  in  us  secret 
chambers  accessible  to  no  other  speech.  The 
same  words,  if  uttered  by  another,  have  not  that 
power,  lacking  that  indefinable  charm. 

II 

What  is  true  of  the  words  of  Jesus  is  equally 
true  of  the  great  and  simple  truths  they  tell, 
whereof  we  need  so  often  to  be  minded.  It  is 
not  by  logic,  nor  by  dogmas — "  truths  packed 
for  transportation,"  as  Phillips  Brooks  used  to 
say — that  our  faith  is  kept  ahve  and  aglow ;  but 
by  the  touch  of  spirit  upon  spirit,  the  contact  of 
soul  with  soul.  Persons  influence  us,  voices 
melt  us,  looks  subdue  us,  and  it  is  only  when 
Truth  is  made  flesh  and  dwells  among  us  that  its 
presence  is  a  power.  Because  this  is  so,  only 
when  the  man  of  the  pulpit  forgets  that  he  has  a 
name  and  an  isolated  soul,  and  becomes  the 
embodiment  alike  of  human  need  and  divine 
grace,  does  he  stir  us  deeply,  tenderly,  vitally, 
awakening  memories  of  the  time  when  the  heart 
was  pure,  while  beckoning  us  to  become  that 
which  we  have  so  often  dreamed.  This  is  more 
than  eloquence ;  it  is  life.  At  such  times  the 
Unseen  seems  to  drop  its  veil,  and  the  Life  of 
the  Spirit  invites  us  with  the  lure  of  its  own 
beauty,  putting  to  shame  the  neglect  which  eats 
away  our  hidden  riches. 

One  of  the  great  sermons  of  Newman  at  Ox- 


THE  SECRET  OF  POWER  II5 

ford  had  this  for  its  thesis  :  that  the  influence  of 
personality  has  from  the  first  been  the  chief 
means  of  bearing  spiritual  truth  to  the  human 
soul,  and  a  sermon  more  fundamentally  true 
and  beautiful  does  not  exist.*  How  else  can 
this  apparently  incommunicable  thing  called 
religious  faith  be  taught  ?  Is  it  true,  as  William 
James  held,  that  a  mystical  experience  is  of 
authority  and  value  only  to  him  who  possesses 
it,  a  dark  lantern  of  the  spirit  which  none  can 
see  by  but  the  man  who  carries  it  ?  Far  from  it ; 
and  it  is  here  that  we  come  upon  the  truth  of 
which  Newman — like  Phillips  Brooks,  and  every 
great  leader  of  the  souls  of  men — was  at  once  a 
teacher  and  a  shining  example.  The  personal 
equation  in  faith — the  "  illative  sense,"  as  he 
called  it — by  its  very  nature  mystical,  can  be 
altered  only  by  personality  which  is  also  mys- 
tical. Hence  the  priceless  value  of  a  man  like 
Newman  himself,  whose  genius,  full  of  "  that 
within  us  not  ourselves  which  makes  for  right- 
eousness "  and  faith,  was  a  "  kindly  light "  in  a 
beshadowed  age.  Few  have  ever  equalled  him 
as  a  teacher  of  the  soul  of  man,  as  a  follower  of 
the  subtle  motions  of  the  spirit,  and  the  sudden 
starts  of  conscience,  in  moments 

'*  When  the  light  of  sense  goes  out. 
But  with  a  flash  that  has  revealed 
The  invisible  world." 

^"  University  Sermons,"  by  J.  H.  Newman,  Sermon  V(i87i). 


Il6    THE  CULTURE  OF  THE  SOUL 

With  what  impressiveness  it  comes  home  to 
even  the  humblest  teacher  of  faith,  that  it  is  not 
so  much  what  we  do  or  say  that  wins  men  to  the 
higher  hfe,  but  what  we  are ;  our  characters 
more  than  our  tenets.  George  Ehot  has  de- 
scribed this  blessed  influence  of  one  loving  soul 
over  another —  •'  not  calculable  by  algebra,  not 
deducible  by  logic,  but  mysterious,  effectual, 
mighty  as  the  hidden  process  by  which  the  tiny 
seed  is  quickened  and  bursts  forth  into  tall  stem 
and  broad  leaf  and  glowing  tasselled  flower." 
Ideas,  she  tells  us — remembering,  no  doubt,  the 
life  of  her  aunt,  who  lives  again  in  Dinah  Morris 
— are  poor,  pale  ghosts  which  pass  athwart  us  in 
their  vapour  and  cannot  make  themselves  felt. 
But  "  sometimes  they  are  made  flesh ;  they 
breathe  upon  us  with  warm  breath,  they  touch 
us  with  soft,  responsive  hands,  they  look  at  us 
with  sad,  sincere  eyes,  and  speak  to  us  in  appeal- 
ing tones  ;  they  are  clothed  in  a  living  soul,  with 
all  its  conflicts,  its  faith,  and  its  love.  Then 
their  presence  is  a  power,  then  they  shake  us 
like  a  passion,  and  we  are  drawn  after  them  with 
gentle  compulsion,  as  flame  is  drawn  after 
flame." 

Not  in  the  pulpit  alone,  but  through  all  the 
ramifications  of  human  fellowship,  it  is  person- 
ality that  tells  ;  as,  for  instance,  in  the  influence  of 
a  great  teacher  on  "  Tom  Brown's  School  Days  " 
— a  book  which,  despite  its  "  muscular  Christian- 


THE   SECRET   OF   POWER  II7 

ity  "  which  would  prove  its  faith  by  fisticuffs, 
after  the  manner  of  boy  rehgion,  remains  a 
classic  in  its  way.  Who  can  forget  the  visit  of 
Tom  to  the  Rugby  Chapel  after  the  death  of  Dr. 
Arnold,  his  honoured  and  dear  teacher :  how  he 
walked  humbly  down  to  the  lowest  bench  and 
sat  once  more  in  the  very  seat  which  he  had  oc- 
cupied in  his  first  Sunday  at  the  famous  school. 
Old  memories  rushed  over  him,  form  after  form 
of  boys,  nobler  and  braver  than  he,  returned, 
and  seemed  to  rebuke  him.  But  above  all  rose 
the  image  of  that  stately,  firm  and  noble  man, 
sleeping  now  beneath  the  altar,  by  whom  his 
young  soul  had  been  awakened  and  led  to  a 
vision  of  what  it  is  to  be  a  man.  Walking  up 
the  altar  steps,  his  eyes  dim  with  tears,  he  knelt 
hopefully,  and  laid  down  there  his  share  of  a 
burden  which  had  proved  itself  too  heavy  for 
him  to  bear  in  his  own  strength. 

**  Here  let  us  leave  him,"  says  his  historian — 
"  where  better  could  we  leave  him,  than  at  the 
altar,  before  which  he  had  first  caught  a  glimpse 
of  the  glory  of  his  birthright,  and  felt  the  draw- 
ing of  the  bond  which  links  all  living  souls  to- 
gether into  one  brotherhood — at  the  grave 
beneath  the  altar  of  him,  who  had  opened  his 
eyes  to  see  that  glory,  and  softened  his  heart  till 
it  could  feel  that  bond.  Let  us  not  be  too  hard 
on  him,  if  at  that  moment  his  soul  is  fuller  of  the 
tomb  and  him  who  lies  there  than  of  the  altar 


Il8    THE  CULTURE  OF  THE  SOUL 

and  Him  of  whom  it  speaks.  Such  stages  have 
to  be  gone  through,  I  beheve,  by  all  young  and 
brave  souls,  who  must  win  their  way  through 
hero-worship  to  the  worship  of  Him  who  is  the 
King  and  Lord  of  heroes." 

There  are  souls  who,  worn  thin  and  penurious, 
make  even  great  things  dwindle  at  their  touch, 
while  others,  throbbing  with  gracious  power, 
transform  ordinary  tasks  into  something  rich  and 
strange.  Some  men  and  women  are  gifted  with  a 
peculiar  and  persuasive  fascination,  which  their 
fellows  can  neither  resist  nor  define ;  they  are 
made  to  be  loved,  made  to  lead  and  command. 

*♦  All  familiar  things  they  touch, 

All  common  words  they  speak,  become 
Like  forms  and  sounds  of  a  diviner  world ;  " 

every  word  a  revelation,  every  gesture  an  event. 
None  can  tell  of  what  that  mystic  power  con- 
sists, least  of  all  those  who  are  so  fortunate  as  to 
possess  it.  It  is  an  indefinable  quality,  a  kind  of 
"  ethereal  fifth  essence  "  which,  like  magic,  gives 
some  men  and  women  an  unexplained  influence 
and  ascendency  over  us.  This  is  what  we  ordi- 
narily mean — a  something  too  fine  and  subtle,  in- 
deed, to  be  put  into  words — when  we  say  that  a 
man  has  personality,  or  that  he  has  it  not.  And 
this  is  the  secret  of  power,  for  good  or  ill,  in  hu- 
man life. 


II 

WHAT  IS  PERSONALITY? 

I 

THAT  personality  is  a  matter  of  birth  or 
accident,  like  fair  features  or  dark  blue 
eyes,  is  a  prevailing  impression  with 
many.  That  it  is  most  marked  in  the  less  sanc- 
tified types  of  humanity  has,  strangely  enough, 
been  the  claim  of  more.  That  it  is  lost  utterly 
in  the  upper  airs  of  being,  where  the  infinite 
woos  the  finite  into  its  mystery,  has  apparently 
been  the  teaching  all  along  the  mystic  ranks 
of  philosophy  and  religion,  from  the  "  sacred 
seven  "  down.  All  of  these  views  would  seem 
to  be  equally  removed  from  the  truth,  which 
assuredly  does  not  render  what  Rudolf  Eucken 
calls  the  "  redemptive  making  of  personal- 
ity "  *  either  impossible,  undesirable,  or  useless. 
One  of  these  views  leaves  us  in  the  clutch  of  fate, 
as  clay  in  the  hand  of  the  potter ;  another  ends 
in  pantheism,  which  dissolves  the  pearl  of  great 
value ;  while  the  second,  though  widely  held,  is 
at  war  with  the  facts  and  nothing  short  of  absurd. 
All  of  which  may  justify  an  inquiry  as  to  what 

^  "  Rudolf  Eucken's  Philosophy,"  by  Royce  Gibson  (1909). 

119 


I20  THE   CULTURE   OF   THE   SOUL 

personality  really  is,  how  it  is  constituted,  and 
what  power  we  have  to  modify,  enlarge  and 
ennoble  it. 

Words,  when  turned  from  their  original  import 
and  perverted  by  loose  usage,  exert  a  fatal  influ- 
ence on  thought  and  belief.  The  word  persona, 
from  which  our  English  word  person  is  derived, 
meant,  originally,  the  mask  worn  by  actors  on  the 
classic  stage,  all  the  parts  in  Greek  and  Roman 
drama  being  performed  in  masks.  The  mask 
was  called  in  Latin  persona,  {xom.persono,  meaning 
**  I  sound  through,"  hence  very  naturally  it  came  to 
signify  the  part  performed,  the  character  person- 
ated. From  the  stage  of  the  theatre  the  word 
passed  to  the  scenes  of  life,  and  person  denoted 
the  character  which  a  man  presented  to  the  world, 
the  part  he  enacted  in  life.  For  whether  in  guise 
or  disguise,  every  man  is  an  actor  and  plays  a 
part,  and  all  that  we  really  know  of  a  man  is  the 
part  he  plays ;  the  real  man  is  never  seen.  Per- 
haps we  are  justified  in  using  the  words  person 
and  individual  the  one  for  the  other,  since  all  we 
know  of  individuals  is  their  persons.  Only,  we 
must  keep  it  ever  \x\.  mind  that  there  is  something 
deeper  in  a  man  than  his  person,  and  that  though 
the  person  is  the  outbirth  of  the  individual,  and 
is  constituted  by  the  individual,  it  nevertheless  is 
not  the  individual;  is  not  identical  with  the  in- 
nermost being,  but  something  exterior  and  dis- 
tinct.    We  live  in  a  world  where  each  one  is  a 


WHAT   IS   PERSONALITY?  121 

veiled  mystery  to  his  fellows,  and  even  our  best 
friend  is  like  Eros  whose  face  Psyche  sought  to 
behold,  with  what  tragedy  we  know. 

Three  things  must  be  kept  apart  in  our  thought, 
if  we  would  think  clearly  in  this  matter :  the  un- 
known something  which  lies  below  all  else  as  the 
ground  of  our  being  ;  the  conscious  individual 
self;  and  the  person.^  Happily  it  is  with  the 
last  of  these  that  we  have  to  do  here,  else  this 
inquiry  would  soon  lose  itself  in  waveless  depths 
which  no  man  may  fathom.  The  person,  as  has 
been  said,  is  the  image  a  man  presents  to  the 
world,  his  character  as  shown  in  word  and  act  as 
he  moves  in  the  scenes  of  life.  Using  the  word 
in  this  sense,  we  may  ask  what  relation  does  the 
person  bear  to  the  individual — that  is,  how  much 
of  the  individual  goes  into  the  person  ?  All,  it 
may  be  answered,  that  given  conditions — by 
which  is  meant  native  endowment,  temperament, 
education,  habit,  social  fellowship  and  fortune — 
will  allow.  No  one  can  say  absolutely,  even 
with  regard  to  himself,  that  the  individual  is 
expressed  in  the  person.  In  some  men  we  feel 
— perhaps  also  in  ourselves — that  there  are  capa- 
bilities which  are  never  brought  out  in  their  lives, 
which  find  no  scope  in  their  environment,  and 
which    remain    unused.     Yet    the   very   feeling 

^  See  a  paper  on  "  Personality,"  by  Dr.  F.  H.  Hedge,  found 
in  a  volume  of  his  essays  entitled,  "  Martin  Luther  and  Other 
Essays"  (i8S8),  to  which  the  present  paper  is  richly  indebted. 


122  THE  CULTURE  OF  THE  SOUL 

which  such  men  inspire  in  us  is  a  part  of  their 
personahty,  since  it  belongs  to  them  to  create  in 
us  an  impression  of  reserved  or  unused  power. 
So,  if  we  may  not  say  that  the  person  is  all  there 
is  in  a  man,  we  can  say  that  it  is  all  there  is  of 
him.  At  least  it  is  all  that  we  know  of  him,  and 
all  that  the  world  knows. 

So  that  personahty  is  a  matter  of  expression, 
and  in  nothing  do  men  differ  more  than  in  their 
ability  to  put  themselves  into  their  words  and 
deeds.  It  may  be  true,  as  Emerson  held,  that  all 
souls  are  equally  rich — that  what  Plato  thought 
all  may  think,  what  the  saints  have  felt  all  may 
feel — but  by  a  fine  art  of  life  Plato  and  St.  Francis 
gave  lovely  and  abiding  shape  to  the  beauty 
that  was  in  them.  Emerson  argued  that  such 
beauty  is  in  all  of  us,  potentially  at  least,  else  we 
would  not  recognize  it  when  it  is  revealed  in  others. 
If  this  be  so,  many  men  are  like  the  dear  old 
woman  in  the  George  Eliot  story  who  died  un- 
happy for  fear  her  husband  would  not  find  the 
keys  to  the  blue  closet  up-stairs.  They  live  with 
many  closets  locked,  and  take  the  keys  with  them 
when  they  die.  Those  closets  may  be  full  of  treas- 
ure ;  they  may  be  empty  and  bare ;  all  we  know 
is  that  they  are  closed.  Some  natures  seem 
almost  transparent,  but  while  each  may  have  a 
unique  and  precious  beauty  in  his  own  soul,  it  is 
too  often  but  dimly  seen.  Nor  is  this  strange. 
Our  human  lot  is  nowhere  better  described  than 


WHAT  IS   PERSONALITY?  1 23 

by  Robert  Browning  in  "  Paracelsus,"  when  he 
says  that  there  is  an  inmost  centre  of  truth  in  us 
all — \h.Q  fuiikleiji  of  the  German  mystics,  perhaps 
— but  around. 


Wall  upon  wall,  the  gross  flesh  hems  it  in ; 
A  baffling  and  perverting  carnal  mesh 
Binds  it,  and  makes  all  error." 


Not  only  all  error,  but  all  ugliness  as  well ;  for 
the  art  of  life  consists  in  opening  out  a  way 
whence  what  is  deepest  within  us  may  escape 
into  our  words  and  acts.  Whether  the  ^f^gy  of 
ourselves  which  men  see — our  personality — is  a 
true  likeness  or  a  cartoon,  depends  not  only  upon 
our  sincerity  but  also  upon  our  lucidity  of  life. 
Whether  a  man  write  a  poem  or  hve  one,  he  must 
have  "  a  heart  in  the  business,"  as  Gil  Bias  cried 
on  the  road  to  Merida,  but  he  must  also  have  a 
certain  grace  of  art.  By  as  much  as  he  puts 
himself  into  his  work,  transfers  his  spirit  into  it — 
just  as,  it  is  said,  the  Arab  sage,  in  practicing 
with  gems,  looses  their  spirit  in  his  cruce — by  so 
much  does  he  win  personality,  which  is  the  plot 
alike  of  literature,  philosophy,  and  hfe.  But  the 
culture  of  personality  is  of  all  arts  the  most 
difficult,  for  the  raw  material  of  human  nature 
is  obstinate  and  resists  the  impress  of  the  ideal 
in  a  thousand  v/ays.  Hence  the  most  beautiful 
thing  on  earth  is  a  pure  and  noble  soul  express- 


124  THE   CULTURE   OF  THE   SOUL 

ing   itself  ia   a  form   befitting  its   nobility  and 
beauty. 

II 

What  amazed  Robert  Louis  Stevenson,  as  it 
must  amaze  any  thinking  man,  is  that  men  pay 
more  attention  to  the  making  of  a  fortune  than 
to  the  making  of  a  personality.  For  our  per- 
sonality— the  image  of  ourselves  among  men — is 
all  that  remains  of  us  on  earth  when  our  bodily 
form  has  fallen  into  dust.  We  cast  ourselves  into 
our  action,  and  the  cast  remains  ;  all  else  vanishes. 
To  live  on  the  earth  is  thus  not  to  live  while  the 
body  lasts,  and  then  no  more ;  it  is  to  live  forever. 
From  this  kind  of  personal  immortality,  vague  as 
it  may  seem,  there  is  no  escape.  In  this  sense,  if 
in  no  other,  the  words  of  Jesus,  uttered  when  He 
was  about  to  vanish  out  of  sight — "  Lo,  I  am 
with  you  always,  even  unto  the  end  of  the  world" 
— are  eternally  true.  He  is  with  us  still — richly 
and  divinely  with  us  in  the  image  of  Himself 
which  He  stamped  on  the  world ;  with  us,  subtly 
colouring  the  life  of  mankind,  as  the  Friar  said  of 
the  supposedly  dead  hero  in  "  Much  Ado  About 
Nothing  "  :  "  The  idea  of  his  life  shall  sweetly 
creep  into  the  current  of  our  imagination."  So, 
in  less  degree,  are  all  the  prophets,  teachers  and 
saints  who  have  stretched  a  spiritual  firmament 
over  our  workaday  world,  and  set  their  names 
in  it  for  suns  and  stars. 

All  who  were  once  here  are  still  here :  their 


WHAT   IS   PERSONALITY?  1 25 

words  are  they,  their  acts  are  they  ;  and  though 
both  be  forgotten,  their  influence  survives  ;  their 
person  is  immortal.  What  other  men  dreamed 
and  said  and  did  in  the  past  makes  a  network 
about  us,  which  we  cannot  escape.  When  we 
try  to  annul  a  contract,  the  thoughts  of  the  dead 
jurists  of  England,  living  though  their  ashes  have 
long  been  cold,  forbid  us.  If  we  would  over- 
reach a  fellow  man,  the  words  of  an  old  Roman 
lawyer,  who  died  before  Justinian,  estop  us. 
This  act,  Moses  commands ;  that,  King  Alfred. 
Thus  the  dead  rule  and  the  living  obey,  as,  for 
weal  or  woe,  the  men  of  the  future  will  obey  us 
when  our  lives  have  been  added  to  the  momentum 
of  the  great  body  of  influence  and  law.  No 
wonder  the  pioneers  of  our  race  have  found 
comfort  in  this  fact,  as  in  the  shadow  of  a  great 
rock  in  a  weary  land,  taking  thence  the  courage 
to  labour  for  the  right  in  face  of  obloquy  or 
apathy,  assured  that  by  so  doing  they  make  it 
easier  for  the  men  of  to-morrow  to  see  the  truth 
and  do  the  right. 

The  men  of  Islam  say  that  after  death  the  soul 
is  made  to  cross  a  narrow  bridge  over  a  gulf  of 
fire,  on  its  way  to  its  fate.  On  that  bridge  it  is 
met  by  a  spectre,  which  being  questioned  as  to 
what  it  is,  answers,  "  I  am  the  spirit  of  thy  life." 
In  the  case  of  every  soul  that  has  worn  the 
burden  of  flesh  this  is  a  fact — the  spirit  of  its  life 
survives.     Our  earth  teems  with  such.     They  are 


126  THE  CULTURE  OF  THE   SOUL 

all  about  us — not  as  swarming  entities  in  the  air, 
but  as  influences,  ideas,  forces  derived  from  all 
the  shadowy  past.  Every  soul  that  has  lived  on 
the  earth  has  by  its  hfe  added  something,  though 
it  may  have  been  only  a  mite,  to  make  the  world 
what  it  is.  The  strong  man  added  his  labour 
and  sorrow,  the  httle  child  its  smile  and  song ;  for, 
as  George  Ehot  said,  "  that  things  are  not  so  ill 
with  you  and  me  as  they  might  have  been  is  half 
owing  to  the  number  who  lived  faithfully  a  hidden 
life,  and  rest  in  unvisited  tombs."  Many  of  the 
noblest  minds  of  the  race  have  wished  for  no 
other  immortality;  and,  as  some  one  has  well 
said,  for  him  who  is  careless  of  this,  no  other 
immortality  can  yield  much  joy. 

If  the  soul  sees,  after  death,  what  passes  on 
this  earth,  and  watches  over  the  welfare  of  those 
it  loves,  then  must  its  keenest  joy  consist  in  seeing 
its  good  influences  widen  out,  as  rivulets  widen 
into  rivers  ;  and  its  sharpest  pang  in  seeing  its 
evil  influences  causing  mischief  and  misery. 
Lofty  and  noble,  albeit  touched  with  plaintive 
wistfulness,  was  the  prayer  of  George  Eliot,  in 
which  all  of  us  may  devoutly  unite — though  we 
may  not  hope  to  have  it  answered  for  us  in  the 
same  far-reaching  manner  that  it  has  been  an- 
swered for  her — when  she  asked  that  she  might 
join  "  the  choir  invisible  of  those  immortal  dead 
who  live  again  in  minds  made  better  by  their 
presence,"  and 


WHAT   IS   PERSONALITY?  I27 

**Be  toother  souls 
A  cup  of  strength  in  some  great  agony, 
Enkindle  generous  ardour,  feed  pure  love, 
Be  the  sweet  presence  of  a  good  diffuse 
And  in  diffusion  ever  more  intense." 

Yet,  even  so,  it  is  a  dim  destiny  for  which  we 
thus  ask,  and  far  below  what  we  have  reason  to 
hope.  Vague  indeed  is  the  dream  of  living  again 
in  the  lives  of  others,  as  influences  urging  them  to 
vaster  thoughts,  or  else  as  our  inherited  tendencies 
are  the  pale  immortality  in  us  of  those  who  went 
before  us.  If  this  be  all,  even  if  our  prayer  were 
answered,  it  could  only  mean  that  at  last,  after 
myriads  of  dusty  deaths,  in  some  distant  time  a 
few  men  would  be  utterly  good  and  utterly  wise  ; 
but  only  for  a  brief  time,  for  they  too  would  soon 
vanish.  No  ;  the  far  off  divine  event,  hinted  to 
us  in  the  finale  of  "  In  Memoriam,"  stirs  us  only 
when  we  feel  that  we  are  to  see  that  victory. 
What  is  immortahty,  if  to  attain  it  our  souls  here 
and  now  be  lost  or  so  changed  that  we  have  no 
memory^of  the  people  and  things  we  loved,  of  the 
suffering  we  bore  or  inflicted,  of  even  the  sins  that 
made  us  glad  only  to  make  us,  later,  sad  ?  Though 
Theocritus  and  his  songs  be  remembered,  does 
he  remember  the  island  of  which  he  sang,  its  soft 
skies  and  its  violet  seas  ?  What  to  him  is  an 
eternity  of  fame  in  his  long-echoing  song,  if  he 
remember  not  ? 

That  there  is  another  kind  of  immortality,  a 


128  THE   CULTURE  OF  THE  SOUL 

contiiiLiing  life  of  the  individual  self,  some  of  us 
are  confident;  just  as  we  are  sure  that  Jesus  is 
with  us  in  ways  more  dynamic  than  as  an  image 
of  ideal  beauty,  "  a  sovereign  legend  of  pity," 
and  an  influence  for  good.  That  the  soul,  the 
innermost  being,  is  immortal  needs  no  proof, 
since  it  belongs  to  the  nature  of  an  entity,  if  such 
it  be,  or  to  a  force,  as  it  certainly  is,  to  persist. 
That  it  will  exist  as  a  conscious  individual  self, 
retaining  love,  memory,  and  fellowship,  we  can- 
not prove.  Yet  of  this,  too,  some  of  us  are  in- 
creasingly assured,  having,  as  we  think,  ample 
basis  for  a  just  and  victorious  hope.  While  we 
do  not  know  the  future,  whether  far  or  near,  a 
vision  of  the  fathomless  depths  out  of  which  the 
soul  has  come,  and  the  unfulfilled  powers  with 
which  it  is  endowed,  give  intimation  of  its  power 
of  going  on.  Think  of  it  how  we  will,  the  only 
way  out  of  unworthy  views  of  both  God  and  man 
is  the  faith  that  He  who  made  us  what  we  are 
will  lead  us  to  what  we  ought  to  be. 


Ill 

THE  ABYSMAL  DEPTHS 

OF  the  nature  of  the  deeper  self,  which  hes 
below  personality,  much  has  been  said 
of  late  years.  Many  lights  have  been 
thrown  upon  it,  many  plummets  dropped 
into  it,  but  it  is  not  clear  that  we  know 
much  more  about  what  lies  in  that  abys- 
mal depth  than  Plato  knew.  Like  him,  we  must 
still  speak  of  these  things  in  myths,  parables, 
and  symbols,  in  what  he  called  "  lies  by  approx- 
imation,"— and  lies  they  must  needs  be,  since  we 
cannot  tell  the  truth  about  these  veiled  mysteries. 
Those  who  talk  so  wisely  of  the  Platonic  idea  of 
the  soul  ought,  in  all  fairness,  to  specify  which 
one  of  his  ideas  they  have  in  mind.  For  he  had 
many  and  various  thoughts  about  the  nature  of 
the  soul  and  its  wayfaring  in  the  future,  and  ap- 
parently none  of  them  were  such  as  are  so  often 
ascribed  to  him,  which  are  often  only  exigeses 
of  his  misunderstood  metaphors  into  dogmat- 
ically asserted  metaphysical  entities.  As  was 
said  of  another,  Plato  was  too  wise  to  be  wholly 
a  poet,  yet  too  truly  a  poet  to  be  implacably  wise. 
Only  a  word  can  be  said  about  what  is  called 
the  modern  "  science  of  the  subconscious,"  and 

129 


I30         THE   CULTURE  OF  THE   SOUL 

it  must  be  a  word  of  grave  caution,  lest  we  find 
ourselves  in  a  bog.  *  It  is  true  that  a  part  of  our 
nature,  perhaps  its  largest  part,  lies  below  the 
level  of  conscious  feeling,  thought,  and  will,  and 
that  our  surface  self  is  indeed  small  in  compari- 
son with  what  is  hidden  beneath  it  in  "  the  centre, 
the  fund,  the  bottom,  of  the  soul,"  as  William 
Law  would  say.  It  may  be  that  the  real  ma- 
chinery of  our  being,  like  that  of  an  ocean  liner, 
is  far  below,  but  the  captain  and  the  pilot  must 
be  on  deck  and  at  their  posts,  or  the  ship  will 
come  to  grief.  Nor  must  we  forget  that  much 
else  is  hidden  in  those  mysterious  recesses  be- 
sides the  automatic  activities  of  our  nature,  such 
as  our  hereditary  tendencies  and  the  like.  There, 
side  by  side  with  the  least  known  powers  of  man, 
are  also  his  most  animal  instincts,  his  ugly  Mr. 
Hyde,  the  remains  of  his  savage  ancestry ;  all 
that  the  soul  either  casts  off  or  transmutes  in  its 

•  It  has  been  said  that  William  James  and  F.  W.  H.  Myers  are 
to  blame,  if  blame  there  be,  for  the  present  emphasis  on  the 
subconscious  as  applied  to  religious  experience.  However 
that  may  be,  each  knew  what  he  was  about,  and  neither  should 
be  held  to  account  for  the  deluge  of  pseudo-science  and  fantas- 
tic nonsense  which  now  threatens  us.  So  potent  is  this  charm 
of  the  subliminal  that  even  teachers  of  accredited  acumen  have 
been  enticed  thereby  into  strange  ways.  When  the  subliminal 
is  hailed  as  "  the  Mesopotamia  of  Liberal  Christianity " ; 
•when  the  telepathic  hypothesis  is  evoked  to  support  the  mys- 
ticism of  St.  Paul  ("  Paul  the  Mystic,"  by  J.  M.  Campbell, 
1907)  or  to  settle  the  question  of  inspiration,  as  though  prophets 
were  inspired  from  below  and  not  from  above  ('<  The  Rational 
Basis  of  Orthodoxy,"  by  A.  W.  Moore,  1901);  when  spiritism 


THE  ABYSMAL  DEPTHS  I31 

ascent.  At  least  we  should  be  careful  to  avoid 
the  blunder  of  making  it  appear  that  the  subcon- 
scious, whether  as  a  mental  or  moral  factor,  is 
superior  to  the  conscious  ;  a  view  which,  if  fol- 
lowed out,  means  fatalism  and  the  end  of  moral- 
ity. Too  often,  one  fears,  the  advocates  of  the 
subconscious  forget  the  "  ape  and  tiger"  in  their 
effort  to  rescue  an  imprisoned  angel. 

Whether  this  vague  region  lies  above,  as 
Ebrard  thought,  or  below,  as  is  now  held,  it  is 
less  a  region  than  a  name,  when  it  is  not  simply 
a  convenient  receptacle  for  inconvenient  facts. 
No  doubt  Noah  was  aware  of  the  fact  that  there  is 
more  in  the  depth  of  the  soul  than  he  himself 
knew — unguessed  powers  which  crises  evoke; 
reserved  strengths  near  at  hand,  glimpses  of 
hitherto  unimagined  beauties  and  horrors — but 

serves  to  confirm  **  the  post  mortem  "  life  of  Jesus  ("  Religion 
and  Experience,"  by  J.  Brierly,  1906)  ;  when  the  subconscious 
is  apparently  made  the  basis  of  theology  ("  The  New  Theol- 
ogy," by  R.  J,  Campbell,  1907),  if  not  the  explanation  of  the 
divinity  of  Christ,  in  lieu  of  the  Kenotic  theories  of  Germany 
("  Personality  in  Christ  and  in  Ourselves,"  by  Wm.  Sanday 
191 1);  with  quaint  revivals  of  antique  superstitions  wearing 
the  name  of  New  Thought  ("  The  Power  of  Silence,"  by 
H.  W.  Dresser,  pp.  59,  84ff,  1899),  it  is  time  to  pause.  All  this 
despite  the  warning  of  science  and  without  its  sanction.  ("A 
Symposium,  Journal  of  Abnormal  Psychology,"  April-May  and 
June- July,  1907;  "The  Subconscious,"  by  Joseph  Jastrow, 
1906;  "  Personalism,"  by  B.  P.  Bowne,  1908.)  Why  this  is  so, 
and  by  what  exigency  wise  men  were  driven  or  led  into  a  blind 
alley,  Prof.  G.  A.  Coe  has  pointed  out,  and  his  satire  is  not 
amiss.     ("American  Journal  of  Theology,  July,  1909.) 


132         THE  CULTURE  OF  THE  SOUL 

he  did  not  betake  himself  to  that  realm,  imply- 
ing, if  not  confessing,  the  defeat  of  thought  in 
its  higher  reaches.  Nor  did  he,  so  far  as  we 
know,  exhort  men  to  abandon  the  watch-tower 
of  the  soul  and  look  for  God  amid  the  shadows 
in  the  basement  of  the  mind.  Character  would 
seem  to  be  formed  by  conscious  self-determina- 
tions ;  and  the  way  to  God,  if  He  is  to  be  found 
at  all,  is  by  raising  all  our  powers,  rational  and 
moral,  to  their  height ;  not  by  wandering  through 
the  dim  passages  of  the  subconscious,  seeking 
tne  still  darker  relations  with  the  under  world  by 
which  the  subconscious  has  been  formed,  or  is 
being  influenced  through  inarticulate  memories 
and  impressions,  only  to  fall  into  the  abyss  of  the 
unknowable.  No ;  we  are  bidden  to  seek  those 
things  which  are  above,  climbing  out  of  the  dark 
caves  towards  a  star  of  happy  light. 

Our  conscious  life  may  be  only  a  flowing 
mirror  on  the  surface  of  the  soul,  reflecting  the 
stars  above  and  the  wonders  below,  but  it  is  our 
chief  point  of  interest.  Though  it  be  only  a 
tiny  plot,  it  is  none  the  less  our  field,  and  about 
it  as  a  centre  a  man  must  unify  himself,  bringing 
out  of  the  hiddenness  of  his  nature  what  treas- 
ures *  soever  may  be  there,  remaking,  transmut- 

^  But  Dr.  Sanday,  in  his  lectures  on  "  Personality  in  Christ 
and  in  Ourselves  "  (1911),  will  have  it  that  the  subconscious  is 
not  only  a  storeroom,  but  a  workshop  ;  "  none  the  less  a  work- 
shop because  the   work  is   done   in  the  dark "  (p.  38).     To 


THE  ABYSMAL  DEPTHS  1 33 

ing,  and  enriching  it,  and  thus  •'  putting  on  the 
divine  humanity."  One  man  has  done  well 
when  he  has  brought  to  the  surface  ore  which 
another  man — like  Emerson  or  Newman — whose 
moral  mining  seems  to  have  been  done  for  him 
before  he  was  born,  with  less  effort  works  into 
shapes  of  beauty.  Our  task  is  to  widen,  deepen, 
and  heighten  the  area  of  conscious  life  and 
activity,  opening  up  the  paths  which  permit  the 
inflow  of  larger  life,  and  the  fellowship  of  higher 
reality.  We  are,  as  Plato  said,  not  so  much  a 
being  as  a  becoming  ;  and  it  is  only  by  an  unrest- 

which  all  agree — but  he  does  not  raise  the  question  as  to 
whether  there  is  anything  in  the  subconscious  that  did  not 
originally  enter  through  the  gate  of  consciousness,  though  he 
seems  to  imply  that  there  may  be  a  dark  back  door  to  the  mind. 
But,  admit  that  the  subconscious  is  a  workshop :  who  is  the 
workman,  or  is  the  work  done  automatically  ?  If  our  moral  life 
is  wrought  out  largely  in  this  way,  is  it  moral  at  all  ?  If  our 
communion  with  God,  as  he  tells  us,  is  also  in  large  part  of  this 
kind,  is  it  communion  ?  It  was  the  thesis  of  George  Eliot,  in 
"  Romola,"  that  sin  consists  primarily  not  so  much  in  the 
motive  as  in  the  making  of  the  motive  ;  that  is,  in  the  intent 
involved  in  attention ;  the  will  as  applied  to  the  choice  of  ideas 
that  shall  frequent  the  mental  life,  and,  by  playing  round  it 
and  through  it,  make  it  after  their  own  fashion.  This  thesis 
she  works  out  with  rare  insight  and  impressiveness ;  but  she 
leaves  us  in  no  doubt  as  to  Tito  Malema's  deliberate  choice  of 
the  ideas  that  poisoned  his  soul  and  wrought  his  downfall. 
The  work  may  have  been  done  in  the  dark,  but  he  initiated  it 
and  furnished  the  pattern.  It  is  not  otherwise  in  the  life  of 
faith,  and  prayer,  and  hope,  which,  however  dim  and  half-con- 
scious its  beginnings,  becomes  more  and  more  a  conscious  quest 
and  achievement. 


134  THE   CULTURE  OF  THE  SOUL 

ing  process  of  advance  along  "  the  inward  way," 
involving  the  death  in  us  of  low-born  and  base 
desires,  that  we  may  attain  to  a  personality  of 
a  superior  type,  and  begin  at  last  fully  to  be. 
Life  should  thus  be  a  perpetual  disclosure  of  a 
beautiful  soul,  if  we  make  it  so,  ever  remember- 
ing, as  we  are  told  in  the  noble  passage  in 
OthellOy  which,  on  the  lips  of  lago,  is  so  out  of 
character,  that  it  may  be  taken  to  be  the  poet 
himself  speaking : 

"  'Tis  in  ourselves  that  we  are  thus,  or  thus. 
Our  bodies  are  our  gardens,  to  the  which  our 
wills  are  gardeners;  so  that  if  we  will  plant 
nettles  or  sow  lettuce,  set  hyssop  and  weed  up 
thyme,  supply  it  with  one  gender  of  herbs  or 
distract  it  with  many,  either  to  have  it  sterile 
with  idleness  or  manured  with  industry,  why,  the 
power  and  corrigible  authority  of  this  lies  in  our 
wills.  If  the  balance  of  our  lives  had  not  one 
scale  of  reason  to  poise  another  of  sensuaHty,  the 
blood  and  baseness  of  our  natures  would  conduct 
us  to  most  preposterous  conclusions ;  but  we 
have  reason  to  cool  our  raging  motions,  our 
carnal  stings,"  and  so  on,  in  several  sentences 
more  of  Elizabethan  bluntness. 

Nor  is  it  true  that  the  soul,  in  its  higher 
ranges  of  culture  and  achievement,  tends  to  fade 
away  into  the  mist  of  impersonality.  No  stu- 
dent of  biography  can  accept  that  dogma.  It 
may  have  seemed  to  be  true  under  the  shadow 


THE  ABYSMAL  DEPTHS  135 

of  eastern  pantheism,  where  men  were  appar- 
ently lost  and  drowned  while  voyaging  in  divine 
seas,  but  it  was  only  seeming.  If  we  may  judge 
by  the  men  who  have  attained  to  the  highest  life, 
it  is  not  so.  The  two  men  in  recent  time  of 
whom  this  was  most  often  suggested  were  Emer- 
son and  Wordsworth,  yet  no  two  minds  stand 
out  with  more  vividness  and  beauty.  Nor  is  it 
so  in  the  lives  of  the  great  mystics  who  assure 
us,  over  and  over  again,  that  personality  is  not 
lost,  but  becomes  more  real  as  they  approach  the 
divine.  As  St.  Augustine  exclaimed,  "  My  life 
shall  be  a  real  life,  being  wholly  full  of  Thee, "  * 
and  the  nearer  St.  Paul  came  to  Christ  the  more 
vividly  aware  he  became  of  his  own  soul.  Our 
ideals,  in  the  deepest  sense,  are  foregleams  of 
future  possible  reality,  and  our  upward  strivings 
are  prophetic  of  One  in  whom  they  find  fulfill- 
ment and  end.  2 

Of  the  laws  of  the  innermost  life  this  is  not  the 
place  to  speak  in  detail,  except  to  say  that  great 
truths,  when  sincerely  and  habitually  held  in  the 
mind,  find  their  way  into  the  deepest  life,  and 
shape  it.  Finally  and  at  bottom  every  man  is 
what  his  thinking  is.  If  foolish  notions  preside 
over  the  whole  sordid  and  tragical  procession  of 

1 "  Confessions  of  St.  Augustine,"  Book  X,  Chap.  XXVIII. 

2  "  The  Nature  of  Personality,"  by  William  Temple  (1911). 
As  only  the  saints  look  up  references,  one  is  tempted  to  tran- 
scribe the  passage  (pp.  62-64),  but  space  forbids. 


136         THE  CULTURE  OF  THE  SOUL 

human  vice,  that  fact  should  only  serve  to  em- 
phasize the  power  over  man  of  great  and  valid 
ideas.  Since  it  is  true  that  life  answers  to  the 
kind  of  ideas  held  in  the  mind,  it  behooves  us  to 
fix  authentic  and  abiding  truths  in  our  hearts,  and 
hold  them  there  until  they  lay  hold  of  us  and 
make  us  after  their  design.  Here  is  the  strategic 
position  in  the  moral  life.  There  is  no  evil  we 
may  not  overcome,  no  crisis  we  may  not  face,  if 
the  mind  be  thus  armoured  and  the  heart  ruled 
by  just,  sane,  and  lofty  truths.  As  a  man 
thinketh  in  his  heart,  so  is  he,  so  is  God  near  or 
far,  and  so  are  the  abysmal  depths  clear  or  dark. 


IV 

THE  WINGED  VICTORY 

I 

WHAT  is  more  to  the  purpose  of  these 
studies  is  the  inquiry  as  to  whether 
we  can  modify  personaHty,  and  what 
power  we  have  to  enlarge,  elevate  and  expand  it. 
Here  we  meet  the  dogma  of  the  unchangeableness 
of  innate  tendencies  in  men,  and  the  consequent 
invariability  of  the  primitive  disposition.  There 
are  those  who  refuse  to  believe  in  the  new  man, 
or  in  any  positive  improvement  in  a  human  be- 
ing. Only  the  appearances,  they  tell  us,  are  re- 
fined ;  there  is  no  change  below  the  surface. 
The  man  we  knew  ten  years  ago  and  know  now 
is  the  man  we  shall  know  ten  years  hence,  if  we 
are  both  alive.  He  may  make  a  fortune  or  lose 
one.  He  may  succeed  or  fail.  His  wealth  or 
poverty  may  take  him  into  new  society  or  into 
new  surroundings  ;  it  may  give  him  a  new  man- 
ner ;  but  it  will  not  make  him  a  new  man.  He 
may  go  away  to  where  his  scampishness  does 
not  obtrusively  show,  but  a  scamp  he  remains. 

Just  so  a  man  may  grow  stronger  or  feebler 
in  health,  he  must  grow  older,  he  may  grow 
wiser,  but  his  nature  does  not  change.     Life  may 

137 


138  THE  CULTURE   OF   THE   SOUL 

indeed  modify  the  proportions  of  his  character. 
Trouble  may  sharpen  his  sympathies  or  luck  in- 
crease his  native  buoyancy.  But  these  changes 
are,  so  to  speak,  functional,  nor  organic  and 
fundamental.  The  impulsive  man  will  not  be- 
come cautious,  or  the  cautious  man  rash,  though 
education  may  refine  both  and  religion  make 
them  more  reverent.  All  the  tears  in  the  world 
cannot  quench  the  naturally  hopeful,  nor  all  the 
happiness  inspirit  the  naturally  depressed.  If  it 
were  not  so,  say  the  wise  ;  if  changes  of  charac- 
ter were  really  common,  life  would  be  no  drama 
at  all,  but  a  horrible  medley  of  half-seen  acts  and 
broken  dialogue.  It  is  the  "  strict  limitation 
which  the  changelessness  of  character  puts  upon 
the  mutability  of  things  which  makes  life  both 
dear  and  entertaining,"  and  which  mitigates  the 
terrible  sense  of  chance  and  instability  which  oc- 
casionally makes  the  heart  of  even  the  strongest 
man  stand  still  within  him. 

So  argue  the  worldly  wise;  and  while  they 
may  seem  at  first  to  hold  the  field,  yet  their  in- 
sight does  not  go  beneath  the  skin  of  things,  and 
whole  regiments  of  deeper  facts  rise  up  to  put 
their  fatalism  and  pessimism  to  flight.  If  what 
they  say  were  true,  life  would  indeed  be  a  play — 
a  poor  puppet  show  in  which  wooden  figures  are 
pulled  to  and  fro  on  wires  until  the  master  of  the 
stage  grows  aweary  of  the  farce.  To  meet  a  man 
after  ten  years  of  life  in  such  a  world  as  this  and 


THE  WINGED  VICTORY  I39 

find  him  no  deeper  of  soul,  no  larger  of  heart,  no 
more  a  friend  of  God,  is  neither  "  dear  nor  enter- 
taining"; it  is  dismal  tragedy.  What  tragedy, 
then,  if  he  were  doomed  to  such  a  fate— doomed 
to  be  always  the  same,  exhibiting,  like  some  of 
the  figures  in  the  Dickens  stories,  the  same  tricks 
and  traits  of  nature,  with  never  any  variation,  nor 
any  hope  of  freedom  or  change !  Then  would 
our  humanity  be  an  assembly  of  wax  figures, 
and  our  human  voyage  "  a  painted  ship  upon  a 
painted  ocean."  No,  what  makes  life  dear  and 
worth  the  hving  is  the  touch  of  soul  upon  soul, 
evoking  new  powers  and  making  us  other  and 
better  than  we  were ;  and  the  play  upon  us  of  di- 
vine influences,  wooing  us  to  higher  life  and  richer, 
with  a  vision  of  the  man  we  ought  to  be  ever  on 
before — the  sense,  born  in  each  of  us,  of  a  per- 
fection ever  about  to  be  attained,  a  joy  and  vic- 
tory ever  about  to  be  realized. 

It  is  true,  as  Goethe  said,  that  underneath 
every  human  life  lies  a  divinely  laid  ground-plan, 
upon  which  the  character  must  rest.  Whether  a 
man  build  with  gold,  silver  and  precious  jewels, 
or  with  wood,  hay  and  stubble,  he  can  build  on 
no  other  foundation.  That  is  to  say,  no  man  can 
develop  powers  he  does  not  possess  or  overleap 
the  limits  of  his  being.  Individuality  is  primi- 
tive and  fatal.  Temperament,  no  doubt,  goes  far 
back  and  deep  down,  but  it  is  alterable  to  some 
extent,  while  personality  is  susceptible  to  modifi- 


I40         THE  CULTURE  OF  THE  SOUL 

cation  almost  without  end.  So  that  Tolstoi, 
looking  back  down  the  years,  might  have  seen 
many  effigies  of  himself,  many  personalities — the 
gay,  sin-bespattered  young  nobleman,  the  gloom- 
crowned  atheist,  the  tender,  suffering  humanist, 
and  the  saint  waiting  at  the  beautiful  gate.  It 
may  be  admitted  that  man,  toiling  unaided  and 
alone,  makes  slow  progress  towards  the  ideal,  but 
man  does  not  toil  alone.  Of  old  it  was  written, 
*'  He  hath  made  us,  and  not  we  ourselves,"  and 
nothing  is  more  certain  than  that  He  is  still  ma- 
king and  remaking  us.  Not  that  the  soul  is  in- 
active, or  the  heart  passive  under  His  touch,  but 
in  Him  we  live  and  move  and  have  our  being,  and 
no  man,  though  he  flee  to  the  ends  of  the  earth, 
is  secure  from  His  sweet  surprises. 

Truly  the  wind  bloweth  where  it  listeth,  and 
we  cannot  tell  whence  it  cometh  or  whither  it 
goeth.  Ignatius  Loyola  was  a  gay  Spanish 
gallant  until  a  cannon-ball  broke  his  leg  and  he 
opened  the  "  Lives  of  the  Saints  "  to  beguile  the 
weary  hours.  When,  behold  !  by  some  mysteri- 
ous chemistry,  the  play  of  a  new  influence  upon 
the  old  qualities  produced  not  only  a  revolution 
of  life,  but  a  new  quality  of  character — a  new  per- 
sonality. The  colliers  of  Kingswood,  like  their 
fathers  before  them,  were  big,  rough,  begrimed 
men,  hard  workers  and  hard  drinkers,  until 
Wesley  stood  among  them.  Upon  them  fell  the 
white  fire  from  the  soul  of  the  great  evangelist, 


THE  WINGED  VICTORY  I4I 

and  the  result  was  a  type  of  life  so  unlike  what 
they  had  been  as  scarcely  to  be  recognizable 
either  by  themselves  or  by  their  neighbours. 
Even  the  lowest  of  the  low — Dead  Souls,  as 
Gogol  would  say,  Ex-Men,  as  Gorky  described 
them — are  thus  transformed  and  raised,  as  from 
the  grave,  into  lives  of  purity,  usefulness  and 
joy ;  not  only  saved,  but  filled  with  an  ardent, 
tender,  joyous  passion  to  rescue  others  of  their 
kind/  So  read  the  records  of  the  Christian 
ages,  disclosing  a  power  working  in  us  and 
through  us,  renewing  a  right  spirit  within  man 
and  establishing  a  new  order  of  life. 

Here  is  a  fact — as  old  as  Pascal,  St.  Francis 
and  St.  Paul,  known  to  Augustine  and  Cardinal 
Newman — which  puts  fatalism  and  pessimism, 
with  all  their  wise  and  witty  lore,  to  shame.  The 
discovery  of  a  new  element  in  the  air,  or  of  a  new 
star  out  on  some  dim  margin  of  the  heavens, 
thrilling  as  each  may  be,  is  only  the  wonder  of  a 
day  compared  with  this  marvel.     Deny  it  as  men 

1  Examples  in  point  are  the  volumes  by  Harold  Begbie, 
"  Twice-Born  Men  "  and  "  Souls  in  Action," — which  the  author 
modestly  describes  as  foot-notes  to  Professor  James'  "  Varieties 
of  Religious  Experience  " — sketches,  from  real  life,  of  human 
wrecks  in  the  East  and  West  Ends  of  London  lifted  out  of  the 
mire  into  usefulness  and  honour  by  the  Gospel  of  Christ,  when 
that  Gospel  was  manifested  through  tender,  tactful,  loving  hu- 
man ministry.  "William  James  does  not  explain  this  wonder; 
nor  does  Harold  Begbie.  They  are  filled  with  awe  by  the 
simple  facts,  which  make  a  rare  assortment  of  human  documents 
and  two  remarkable  volumes  of  Christian  evidences. 


142  THE  CULTURE  OF  THE  SOUL 

will,  this  rebirth  of  the  soul  is  the  master  fact  of 
our  human  world.  Not  only  does  religion  rest 
upon  it,  but  all  our  higher  human  life  is  made 
possible  by  this  self-transcendence,  whereby  the 
soul,  many  times  reborn,  mounts  upward  through 
its  dead  selves  towards  the  ideal.  For  we  need 
not  stop  with  one  or  two  births,  since  life  must  be 
a  continual  death  to  what  is  old  and  a  new  birth 
into  that  spiritual  environment  which  is  always 
and  everywhere  present.  Hence  those  ghmpses, 
intimations,  and  strange  visitings  of  beauty,  and 
the  wisdom  of  the  great  teachers  who  bid  us 
drop  all  and  follow  them. 

II 

No  palace  of  enchantment  was  ever  half  so 
wonderful  as  the  world  in  which  we  live,  where 
the  most  incredible  things  are  every-day  facts. 
From  one  angle  our  earth  is  a  vast  orb  of  dirt 
moving  through  the  air,  driven  by  force ;  but  from 
another  point  of  view  the  chief  fact  about  it  is 
the  elusive  spiritual  atmosphere  in  which  it  is 
embosomed.  God  is  in  it,  and  many  are  the 
ways,  and  delicate  the  heavenly  strategy,  whereby 
He  surprises  the  soul  of  man  and  captures  it. 
Common  things  are  touched,  at  times,  with  an 
eerie  strangeness,  and  familiar  realities  become 
illuminated  messages  of  warning  and  of  hope. 
The  day,  whose  coming  in  beauty  fills  us  with 
nameless    longings,   departs   with   a   glory   that 


THE  WINGED  VICTORY  143 

makes  the  heart  ache  with  a  wild,  sad  joy,  we 
know  not  why.  What  though  a  man  build  him 
a  castle  of  unbeHef,  with  thick  walls  and  frowning 
towers,  he  is  not  safe ;  for, 

"Just  when  we're  safest,  there's  a  sunset  touch, 
A  fancy  from  a  flower-bell,  some  one's  death, 
A  chorus  ending  from  Euripides — 
And  that's  enough  for  fifty  hopes  and  fears, 
As  old  and  new  at  once  as  nature's  self." 

Thus  are  we  lured,  half  unawares,  into  com- 
munion with  Him  to  whom  St.  Anslem  prayed 
as  the  Absolute  Beauty.  Often  a  forest  vista 
seems  to  open,  of  a  sudden,  into  heaven,  as  when 
Louisa  Alcott,  running  over  the  hills,  saw  through 
an  arch  of  trees  the  sun  rise  over  river  and  meadow, 
and  a  great,  God-given  peace  came  into  her  heart, 
*'  never  to  change  through  forty  years  of  life's 
vicissitudes."  There  are,  indeed,  the  darker 
aspects  of  nature,  what  the  Bible  called  "  the 
wrath  of  God " ;  but  the  eternal  beauty  is  far 
more  constant  and  more  persuasive.  Not  less 
true  is  it  of  our  human  world,  in  whose  fellow- 
ships, as  in  a  divine  net,  we  are  caught  and  held 
by  the  Fisher  of  men.  Let  a  man  look  into  his 
heart  and  he  will  see  in  how  many  ways  the  needs 
and  aptitudes  of  our  nature  link  us  to  the  divine, 
and  invite  us  to  a  life  becoming  to  immortal 
souls.  Love  of  persons  and  places,  ties  of  blood 
and  friendship,  tender  strokes  of  sorrow,  the 
ministry  of  music,  memory,  hope,  and  a  sense 


144         THE  CULTURE  OF  THE  SOUL 

of  duty,  with  much  else  of  a  sort  similar,  make 
up  in  large  part  not  only  our  life,  but  also  our 
religion — not  all  of  it,  but  much  of  it ;  for,  "  what 
we  cannot  but  worship,  that  we  should."  ^  No 
wonder  that  from  the  earliest  times  man  has  been 
thinking  beautiful  and  solemn  thoughts  about  the 
world,  about  human  life,  and  about  his  fellow 
souls,  and  out  of  this  response  to  the  mystery 
and  beauty  of  Hfe  grew  his  faiths  and  his  fine  arts. 
Yet  there  is  something  finer  than  the  fine  arts, 
something  to  which  all  art  and  faith  alike  may 
minister :  "  the  art  to  livel'  which  Mark  Pattison 
said  is  the  highest  of  all  arts — but  his  "  Memoirs" 
show,  what  all  of  us  find  out,  how  hard  it  is  to 
master  an  art  which  is  also  an  incarnation. 
Hence  the  wise  life  of  Socrates,  who  did  nothing, 
he  tells  us  in  his  "  Apology,"  but  go  about  per- 
suading men,  old  and  young  alike,  not  to  take 
thought  of  fame  or  fortune,  but  first  and  chiefly 
to  care  about  "  the  greatest  improvement  of  the 
soul."  When  summoned  up,  all  the  high  wisdom 
of  the  world  agrees  that  we  are  here  upon  the 
earth  to  grow  a  rich,  tender,  valiant,  refined  soul, 
and  that  it  is  in  pressing  on  from  what  we  are  to 
something  higher  that  goodness  exists.  Apart 
from  this  ascending  effort  towards  spiritual  grace 
and  beauty,  our  life  has  no  real  meaning,  and 
when  this  quest  is  abandoned  it  loses  its  rhythm 

»  "  The  Religion  of  All  Good  Men,"  by  H.  W.  Garrod,  Chap. 
II  (1906). 


THE  WINGED  VICTORY  I45 

and  its  soul  of  fire.  For  it  is  the  growing  of  a 
soul  which  makes  our  life,  to  its  last  day,  full  of 
zest  and  earnestness,  of  the  joy  of  self-conquest 
and  the  strange  peace  of  self-forgetting.  To  him 
with  whom  courage  is  continual  and  culture  a 
habit,  old  age  will  be  only  "  the  last  of  life  for 
which  the  first  was  made,"  glorified  with  what 
Carlyle  saw  in  Chalmers,  a  kind  of  luminous  se- 
renity, as  of  an  "  oncoming  evening  and  the  star- 
crowned  night." 

Living  in  a  world  of  beauty,  wonder  and 
power,  the  one  art  worth  trying  for  is  the  art  of 
cultivating  a  rich  inner  life,  and  of  giving  it  ex- 
pression in  the  colour,  tone,  and  form  of  our 
souls, — in  the  atmosphere  and  image  of  ourselves 
among  men.  All  that  is  about  us  turns,  by  some 
mysterious  alchemy,  into  something  inside,  be- 
coming a  part  of  our  inmost  self.  This  deposit 
of  experience,  with  whatever  else  may  be  hidden 
in  the  depth  of  our  nature,  is,  so  to  speak,  the 
raw  material  and  energy  which  we  are  to  trans- 
mute until  it  becomes  an  inwrought  grace  in 
our  words  and  acts.  So  then  it  is,  in  this  world 
of  nature  and  society,  of  labour  and  sport,  of  sor- 
row to  some  of  us,  of  temptation  to  all,  and  yet 
more  of  high  incentive  and  appeal,  we  are  all  set 
to  the  task  of  "  working  out  our  own  salvation," 
as  the  wise  old  Bible  puts  it.  To  this  end,  all 
good  things  are  ours  to  be  used  in  the  making  of 
a  life  of  grace,  beauty,  and  power, "  nor  soul  helps 


146         THE  CULTURE  OF   THE   SOUL 

flesh  more,  now,  than  flesh  helps  soul,"  as  Brown- 
ing said  with  a  sure  insight  and  candour.  One 
also  of  our  own  poets  has  shown,  in  a  book  of 
beauty,  in  what  ways  the  body,  so  long  held  to 
be  a  clog  to  the  soul,  may  be  made  an  instrument 
for  the  expression  of  personality. 

"Grace  and  beauty  are  necessities  of  personality 
and  revelations  of  power,  not  to  be  affected  nor 
compelled,  but  to  be  cultivated  lawfully  and  re- 
vered as  puissant  oracles  of  the  divine.  A  well- 
poised  body,  while  expressing  a  well-poised  char- 
acter, reacts,  in  turn,  on  that  character  to  help 
and  enrich  the  whole  personality.  The  soul  is  at 
ease  in  the  body  only  when  it  is  using  it  as  a 
means  of  expression  or  action.  So  when  art 
would  embody  in  beauty  the  idea  of  triumph 
without  weariness,  of  glad  elation  untouched  by 
envious  defeat,  of  high  intelligence  overcoming 
the  barbarous  and  base — when  it  would  add  to 
the  fairest  human  loveliness  some  hint  of  super- 
human power  and  dominion  over  a  region  more 
vast  than  earth — it  created  the  Victory  of  the 
WingSy  to  be  a  lasting  signal  before  our  wonder- 
ing eyes,  and  an  incentive  to  that  dignity  of  bear- 
ing which  we  behold  only  in  the  rarest  personal- 
ities." 1 

^  '*  The  Making  of  Personality,"  by  Bliss  Carmen  (1908).  A 
book  of  beauty  it  is,  aglow  with  colour,  vibrancy,  and  the  joy  of 
living,  as  if  some  old  Greek  had  stepped  out  of  the  world  of  an- 
cient dream. 


THE  WINGED  VICTORY  I47 

When  shall  we  become  that  which  we  are ! 
cried  Maeterlink,  who  knows  that  our  life  should 
be,  through  all  its  unfoldings,  a  Victory  of  the 
Wings.  To  be  sure,  it  was  only  a  fancy  when 
Plato  said  that  the  soul,  in  a  former  state,  was 
winged,  and  that  thus  it  comes  to  pass,  in  this  life, 
when  it  is  stirred  by  the  power  of  music  or  po- 
etry, or  the  sight  of  beauty,  its  memory  is  quick- 
ened, and  forthwith  there  is  a  struggling  and 
pricking  pain,  as  of  wings  trying  to  come  forth. 
Yet  was  it  a  parable  of  what  we  may  become,  as 
shown  us  in  those  skyey  souls  who  reveal  "  to 
what  fine  issues  our  mortal  life  ascends."  These 
sought  the  highest  things,  subdued  passions,  mas- 
tered moods,  harnassed  wayward  wills,  wrought 
in  brave  sincerity,  following  the  angel  of  their 
better  nature,  until  they  attained  to  a  dignity  and 
poise  of  soul,  a  sense  of  glad  elation  without  van- 
ity, like  that  embodied  in  the  Vision  of  the 
Wings.  So  may  we,  frail  though  we  are,  attain 
to  such  grace  and  refinement  of  soul  as  becomes 
men  who  live  in  a  world  where  there  is  truth  to 
seek,  loving  service  to  render,  and  where,  at  sun- 
set, the  clouds  are  touched  as  if  by  magic  into 
something,  it  would  seem,  other  and  diviner  than 
themselves. 


V 

THE  LINES  OF  LIFE 

AS  has  been  said,  chief  among  the  influ- 
ences that  incite  to  noble  Hving,  evoking 
and  giving  shape  to  what  is  best  within 
us,  is  personaUty  itself.  No  other  power  on 
earth  is  so  constant,  so  penetrating,  so  gracious, 
so  irresistible ;  no  other  so  charged  with  poten- 
cies whose  range  we  cannot  limit.  Only  contact 
is  needed,  and  it  becomes  a  haunting,  heahng, 
fructifying  power,  entering  when  the  doors  are 
closed. 

Much  knowledge  we  can  learn  from  books, 
but,  as  John  Morley  reminds  us,  "  the  detail,  the 
colour,  the  tone  which  make  it  live  in  us  all, 
these  you  catch  from  those  in  whom  it  already 
lives."  Under  the  spell  of  the  Truth  made  flesh, 
buds  open  seemingly  of  themselves,  and  men  are 
changed  as  if  by  miracle ;  as  in  the  life  of  Jesus 
the  impulsive  and  unstable  Peter  became  a  man 
of  massive  nobiHty  and  solidity  of  character,  and 
the  fiery  Son  of  Thunder  became  a  meditative 
mystic  who  read  for  us  the  heart  of  the  Master. 
So  it  is,  though  in  less  degree,  all  through  our 
human  life.     There  are  men  to  know  whom  is 

148 


THE  LINES  OF  LIFE  I49 

a  kind  of  religion,  who  are  to  us  what  Edmund 
Spencer  in  his  "  Faerie  Queen  "  said  of  the  true 
teacher — one  who  is  "  with  unwearied  fingers 
drawing  out  the  lines  of  lifey  from  living  knowl- 
edge hid."  In  the  strange  and  tangled  business 
of  the  world  no  other  influence  so  steadily  does 
its  work  as  the  silent,  unobtrusive  power  of  a 
good  life,  which  reaches  to 

"  The  depths  of  human  souls — 
Souls  that  appear  to  have  no  depth  at  all 
To  careless  eyes." 

All  great  souls  are  founders  of  spiritual  fam- 
ilies, centres  wherefrom  radiates  a  new  light,  as 
though  '*  the  flowing  light  of  God  "  were  focused 
in  them,  as  in  a  lens,  only  that  it  may  shine 
through  them  upon  the  human  pathway.  Within 
the  area  of  the  influence  of  a  Paul,  a  Francis,  a 
Wesley,  an  Emerson,  a  new  atmosphere  is  felt, 
and  new  personalities  appear.  The  path  of  St. 
Paul,  the  "  wandering  Ulysses  of  our  Christian 
Odyssey,"  was  marked  by  a  train  of  churches  along 
the  way  of  his  journeyings.  Where  Francis 
went,  he  left  bands  of  men,  "  fragrant  with  a 
wondrous  aspect,"  where  only  idle,  frivolous  or 
filthy  life  had  been  before.  A  whole  race  of 
poets  and  idealists  may  be  traced  to  Emerson, 
while  the  influence  of  Lincoln  is  a  stream  of 
sweetness,  earnestness  and  fine  sagacity  in  our 
national  life.     Which  thing  is  also  a  parable  writ 


I50  THE   CULTURE   OF  THE   SOUL 

in  large  letters  of  what  is  true  of  the  humblest 
life  when  it  has  done  with  self-seeking,  and  has 
learned  to  give  forth  in  a  worthy  form  the  beauty 
that  is  in  it. 

Much  of  the  power  of  great  men  is  due,  no 
doubt,  to  the  ideas  they  advocate  and  the  causes 
they  espouse,  and  more,  perhaps,  to  an  overmas- 
tering, unifying  purpose  which,  both  philosoph- 
ically '  and  practically,  is  needed  to  draw  out  and 
give  direction  to  the  powers.  There  is,  indeed, 
a  noble  kind  of  narrowness,  w^ithout  which  the 
life  of  a  man,  however  rich  and  rare  his  gifts,  is 
apt  to  be,  as  Jeremy  Taylor  said,  "  soft,  loose, 
and  wandering  "  ;  but  one  must  be  broad  before 
he  can  be  nobly,  usefully  narrow.  Wendell 
Phillips  was  a  man  of  broad  culture  and  fine 
powers  who  condensed  his  information  and  en- 
thusiasm and  poured  them  into  one  channelp 
with  the  rapidity  of  a  mountain  torrent.  So, 
after  a  manner,  did  Ruskin,  who  was  moved  by 
the  Spirit  of  Beauty  as  Wesley  was  by  the  Spirit 
of  Jesus ;  the  impetus  of  whose  passionate  evan- 
gelism we  feel  to-day  in  our  desire  that  all  men 
should  have  access  to  beauty,  as  to  a  sacrament, 
as  well  as  in  our  efforts  to  live  beautifully  and 
reverently.  These  men,  and  others  of  their  kind, 
by  bringing  all  their  powers  to  a  focus  upon  a 

*"The  Nature  of  Personality,"  by  William  Temple  (1911), 
where  the  power  of  purpose,  as  a  constitutive  element  in  per- 
sonality, is  emphasized  most  impressively  and  suggestively. 


THE  LINES  OF  LIFE  151 

high  purpose,  impressed  their  purpose,  and  with 
it  themselves,  upon  the  Hfe  of  the  world.  Their 
purpose  gave  definiteness  to  their  lives  while 
saving  them  from  the  self-consciousness  which 
mars  so  many  forms  of  culture.  *  Here  is  a  hint 
which  we  may  follow  to  our  saving.  Noble 
causes  are  ever  beseeching  our  aid,  and  while  we 
may  not  do  great  things,  the  path  is  the  same 
though  it  wind  through  humble  scenes  unnoted 
of  the  world. 

And,  finally,  there  is  an  '*  inward  way  of  hfe  " 
which,  if  followed,  leads  through  the  dark  night 
of  Time  to  such  a  union  with  the  divine  as  lifts 
man  to  the  height  of  vision,  while  helping  him 
the  better  to  serve  his  fellows  in  the  humblest 


1  Not  alone  such  self-culture  as  Goethe  proclaimed,  but  in 
much  of  the  modern  quest  for  personal  power.  Followers  of 
what  is  called  New  Thought  set  little  store,  apparently,  by 
charity,  pity  and  renunciation — the  great  fruits  of  religion. 
Too  often  it  seems  to  be  all  for  their  own  personal  health  or 
luck  or  peace  of  mind  or  success,  and  the  optimism  they  em- 
phasize is  seldom  compatible  with  humility  of  heart.  It  is  a 
self-centred  optimism,  which,  when  it  does  not  blink  the  hard 
facts  of  life,  asks  men  to  think  too  much  about  themselves,  as 
an  actor  keeps  his  mind  fixed  on  his  face.  The  deep  difference 
between  it  and  religion  is,  that  one  wants  to  get,  while  the 
other  wants  to  give ;  for  in  these  high  matters  we  get  by  losing, 
and  can  only  keep  what  we  give  away.  One  almost  feels  that 
the  New  Thought,  while  it  may  have  its  value,  is  a  subtle  self- 
ishness trying  to  wear  the  robes  of  a  mystical  faith.  Our  day 
of  hurry  and  unrest,  when  men  take  up  with  almost  anything 
and  make  a  religion  out  of  it,  gives  it  a  vogue. 


152  THE  CULTURE  OF  THE  SOUL 

tasks  and  duties  of  the  common  lot.  As  we  see 
it  from  afar  in  the  Hves  of  the  great  mystics,  it 
seems  to  mean  not  only  a  new  personality  of 
amazing  beauty  and  power,  but  a  new  order  of 
life,  requiring,  it  has  been  said,  "  a  special  psy- 
chological system"  whereof  we  know  little;  a 
new  centre  of  being  and  a  new  method  of  feeling 
and  action.  To  them  it  is  given  to  know  that 
death  is  nothing  to  the  soul,  and  that  our  hfe  is 
hid  from  the  vanishings  of  Time  in  the  Sanctuary 
of  the  Eternal.  They  are  not  left,  as  we  are,  to 
build  a  frail  hope  out  of  the  fragments  of  three 
score  years  and  ten.  They  are  lifted  to  where 
the  star  of  their  inborn  destiny  Hes  below  their 
feet,  mastered  and  outsped.  Yet  do  they  sit  by 
our  side,  without  insignia  of  wisdom  or  power, 
humble  as  a  little  child :  for  of  such  is  the  king- 
dom of  heaven.  Of  them  and  the  life  they  fol- 
low, a  student  has  written  ;  * 

"  It  ends  with  the  coming  forth  of  divine  hu- 
manity, never  again  to  leave  us  :  living  in  us  and 
with  us,  a  pilgrim,  a  worker,  a  guest  at  our  table, 
a  sharer  at  all  hazards  in  life.  The  mystics  wit- 
ness to  this  story  :  waking  very  early  they  have 
run  on  before  us,  urged  by  the  greatness  of  their 
love.  We,  incapable  as  yet  of  this  subhme 
encounter,  looking  in  their  magic  mirror,  listen- 
ing to  their  stammered  tidings,  may  see  far  off 
the  consummation  of  the  race.     They  have  con- 

1 "  Mysticism,"  by  Evelyn  Underbill  (1911). 


THE   LINES  OF   LIFE  1 53 

formed  here  and  now  to  the  utmost  tests  of  divine 
sonship,  the  final  demands  of  Hfe.  They  have 
not  shrunk  from  the  suffering  of  the  cross.  They 
have  faced  the  darkness  of  the  tomb.  Beauty  and 
agony  alike  have  called  them  :  alike  have  awa- 
kened a  heroic  response.  For  them  the  winter  is 
over :  the  time  of  the  singing  of  birds  is  come." 

All  these  elements  met  in  St.  Paul — the  mystic 
spell  of  a  person,  the  noble  narrowness  of  a  pur- 
pose, and  the  inward  quest  of  spiritual  reality  as 
it  disclosed  itself  to  him  in  prayer  and  brooding 
meditation  which  kindled  his  spirit  and  set  his 
words  afire.  If  one  asks  for  the  meaning  of  his 
life,  the  secret  of  its  splendour  and  power,  it  is 
found  in  the  words  :  "  For  me  to  live  is  Christ !  " 
His  sovereign  ambition,  that  about  which  his 
great  powers  gathered  and  grew,  was  so  to  put 
on  Christ,  so  to  partake  of  the  fellowship  of  His 
sufferings  and  the  sacrament  of  His  death,  as  to 
reproduce  His  personality  on  earth.  It  was 
therefore  that  he  fought  a  good  fight,  kept  the 
faith,  and  was  ready  to  be  offered  up,  knowing 
the  power  of  an  endless  life. 

Weak  though  we  are,  followers  of  the  Master 
afar  off,  with  many  sorrows  and  misgivings,  this 
is  also  our  mission  and  our  destiny.  And  at 
last,  having  "  tried  a  little  and  failed  much," 
though  the  scroll  of  our  life  be  torn  and  soiled, 
as  alas  it  certainly  is,  we  need  not  fear  to  leave 
it  in  the   hands   of  Him  who,  on  that  Sabbath 


154         THE  CULTURE  OF  THE  SOUL 

morning,  closed  the  book  of  prophecy,  assured, 
by  His  Hfe  here  below,  that  He  will  know  what 
we  tried  to  write,  and  will  impute  to  us  somewhat 
of  that  which  we  are  to  be.  Perchance  He  is 
with  us  even  now,  "  with  unwearied  fingers 
drawing  out  the  hues  of  hfe,"  and  we,  slow  of 
heart  and  dull  of  eye,  know  not  that  it  is  He 
whose  Presence  touches  us  to  wisefulness  : 

*'  Lord  Christ,  if  Thou  art  with  us  and  these  eyes 
Are  holden,  while  we  go  sadly  and  say 
*  We  hoped  it  had  been  He,  and  now  to-day 
Is  the  third  day,  and  hope  within  us  dies.' 
Bear  with  us,  oh,  our  Master,  Thou  art  wise 
And  knoweth  our  foolishness  ;  we  do  not  pray 
'  Declare  Thyself,  since  weary  grows  the  way 
And  faith's  new  burden  hard  upon  us  lies.' 
Nay,  choose  Thy  time  ;  but  ah  !  Whoe'er  Thou  art 
Leave  us  not ;  where  have  we  heard  any  voice 
Like  Thine  ?     Our  hearts  burn  in  us  as  we  go ; 
Stay  with  us  ;   break  our  bread  ;  so,  for  our  part 
Ere  darkness  falls  haply  we  may  rejoice. 
Haply  when  day  has  been  far  spent  may  know." 


The  Living  Word  of  Truth 


In  what  sense  is  Christ  eternal  ?  Is  He 
a  living,  abiding  Presence  among  men  ? 
If  so,  how  may  He  become  real  to  us  ? 


FORESHADOWINGS 

LL  of  us  recall  when  the  news  came, 
some  years  ago,  of  awful  disaster  in  the 
East.  For  those  who  knew  its  story, 
Sicily,  even  in  its  sorrow,  was  the  country  of 
glorious  legends  of  love,  of  war,  and  of  a  happy 
age  of  gold ;  and  the  tidings  had  an  added 
poignance  of  pathos,  as  of  sadness  in  remem- 
bered gladness.  Memories  of  the  classics  rose 
up  before  us — gods  and  goddesses,  heroes,  lovers 
in  idyllic  fields,  came  to  mind  and  lived  again 
with  an  immortality  which  the  people  of  yester- 
year could  hardly  hope  for.  Sicily  recalled 
Theocritus,  who  sang  the  songs  of  simple  folk  by 
**  the  light  and  laughing  sea,"  and  whose  poems 
are  among  the  enduring  possessions  of  that 
storied  island  which  not  flood  nor  fire  could 
destroy. 

But  in  the  life  of  Jesus  we  have  something 
more  than  the  survival  of  the  intangible  beauty 
of  art  over  the  impermanence  of  material  things. 
Surely  there  is  no  fact  upon  the  earth  more 
amazing,  from  every  point  of  view,  than  the  fact 
of  Christ — His    Hfe,    His   person,   and    His    in- 

157 


158        THE  LIVING  WORD  OF  TRUTH 

fluence  upon  the  race.  History  makes  Him  real 
to  us  as  a  personality,  as  visible  as  Tacitus  or 
Tiberius ;  but  the  record  of  His  few  short  years, 
on  that  narrow  strip  of  land,  is  only  one  chapter 
of  "an  unfinished  life  which  shapes  the  world." 
Such  a  study,  therefore,  has  to  do  not  simply 
with  One  who  lived  in  the  dim  past,  although 
His  life  divided  the  story  of  man  into  before  and 
after ;  but  with  a  Living  Reality  in  the  present, 
which  is  slowly  changing  the  winter  of  the  world 
into  summer.  Not  only  did  Jesus  bring  man 
and  God  into  a  new  relation  in  a  distant  time, 
when  He  moved  among  the  fisherfolk,  and  His 
words  flashed  their  glory  upon  men  from  the 
facets  of  Oriental  parable  and  paradox.  More 
wonderful  is  the  fact,  and  fact  it  surely  is,  that 
He  does  so  still,  and  that  He  is  thus,  as  a  grave 
historian  has  said,  "  the  personal  concern  of  every 
one  of  us."  ' 

Renan  somewhere  remarks  that  the  great 
achievement  of  Christ  was  that  He  made  Himself 
as  much  beloved  after  His  death  as  He  had  been 
during  His  lifetime.  The  marvel  was  that  One 
who  slept  in  '•  a  lone  Syrian  grave  "  could  grasp 
the  future  in  His  nerveless  hand,  and  touch,  as 
with  a  wand,  the  lives  of  men  on  distant  shores. 
It  is  indeed  a  marvel,  more  strange  than  the 
miracles    of  the   gospel   story    which  the  facile 

1  •*  Conflict  of  Religions  Within  the  Roman  Empire,"  by  T. 
R.  Glover. 


FORESHADOWINGS  159 

stylist  tossed  aside  as  being  so  many  tales  told 
by  those  who  mistook  myths  for  facts.  In  imagi- 
nation one  can  see  Plato  walking  to  and  fro  in 
the  porch  of  philosophy,  and  the  young  Greeks 
listening  to  his  sublime  discourse.  The  scene  is 
remote,  veiled  somewhat  in  mist,  and  touched 
with  the  glamour  of  the  antique.  But  it  is  not  so 
of  Him  who  walked  and  taught  in  Galilee,  albeit 
Tacitus  dismissed  Him  with  a  sentence  and  Lucian 
with  a  sneer.*  Somehow,  though  twenty  ages 
have  passed,  men  do  not  think  of  Him  as  dead, 
nor  yet  as  belonging  to  a  time  long  gone  by. 
Unlike  the  great  Greek,  He  was  not  detained  in 
the  outer  porch  of  the  human  soul,  but  entered, 
as  a  dear  familiar  friend,  into  its  most  hidden 
and  sacred  chambers.  To-day  He  is  a  Living 
Presence  walking  up  and  down  in  the  hearts  of 
men,  a  thousand  times  more  alive  than  when  He 
journeyed  here  below. 

Nor  was  the  life  of  Jesus,  whereof  we  read  in 
"  the  book  of  white  samite,  mystical  and  wonder- 
ful," without  its  remote  genealogy.  The  note  of 
reminiscence  recurs  in  it,  again  and  again,  like  an 
undertone  of  refrain.  About  Him  there  hung 
always  the  suggestion,  the  memory,  of  a  nameless 
and  ineffable  beauty,  or  pity,  which  had  long 
been  haunting  the  world.  Foregleams  of  the 
Christ-spirit,  foretokens  of  the  Christ-idea,  were 

» Tacitus,   **  Annales,''  Chap.  I,  pp.  15,  44;  Lucian,  **  De 
Morte  Peregrini"  Chap.  XI. 


l6o        THE  LIVING  WORD   OF  TRUTH 

seen  in  many  lands,  equally  in  the  dreams  of  in- 
carnations and  in  the  lives  of  men  of  His  spirit — 
sons  of  light  and  mercy  who  were  as  oases  in  the 
desert.  The  Arabic  Gospel  of  the  Infancy  states  * 
that  Zoroaster  had  foretold  the  coming  of  Christ, 
to  whom  the  "  Hymn  of  Zarathushtra,"  recently 
translated,  may  be  taken  as  a  greeting  to  "  an 
expected  champion."  Plato  divined,  dimly,  the 
humanity  of  God  out  of  which  our  humanity  was 
born,  and  longed  to  see  that  eternal  tenderness 
take  human  shape.  It  may  be  that  the  mysteri- 
ous infant  foreshadowed  by  Virgil,  in  the 
'♦  Pollio  Eclogue,"  was  only  a  poetic  dream  of 
a  returning  golden  age ;  but  it  is  a  striking 
passage  none  the  less,^  as  if,  indeed,  "  thoughts 
beyond  their  thoughts  to  those  high  bards  were 
given."  This  dream  took  many  forms  in  the 
poetry,  faith  and  aspiration  of  men,  as  though 
to  show  that  the  vague,  formless  Absolute  did 
not  satisfy  the  human  heart,  which  craved 
some  embodiment,  some  visible  shape  of  the 
Eternal,  about  which  its  love  and  reverence 
might  gather. 

Time  out  of  mind  there  had  been  legends  of 
god-men,  of  divine  incarnations,  of  wonder-work- 
ers and  redeemers  ;  and  so  intense  was  the  long- 
ing for  such  a  teacher  that  it  has  been  conjectured 
that,  had  not  Jesus  come,  it  would  have  gathered 

;    »  Chap.  VII :  "  As  Zerdusht  had  predicted." 

a«  Eclogue;'  Chap.  V,  translated  by  C.  S.  Calverley  (1868). 


FORESHADOWINGS  l6l 

about  some  one  else.^  Examples  are  many,  as  in 
the  inscriptions  of  Priene,  Halicarnassus,  Apemeia 
and  Eumeneia,  lately  come  to  light,  proclaiming 
the  introduction  of  the  Julian  calendar  and  as- 
cribing divine  honours  to  Augustus.  So  also 
Tiridates,  the  Mithraist  king  of  Parthia,  of  whom 
Pliny  the  Elder  tells  us,^  who,  having  heard  that 
the  prosperity  of  the  Roman  Empire  was  due  to 
the  appearance  of  a  divine  incarnation,  an  august 
personality,  who  reigned  under  the  name  and 
title  of  Caesar,  paid  Nero  a  visit,  in  order  to  wor- 
ship the  god-man  and  to  surrender  to  him  the 
kingdom  of  Parthia.  How  little  did  he  know 
Nero,  although  he  addressed  him,  so  Dion  Cas- 
sius  reports,^  with  the  words  :  "  I  came  to  thee,  as 

1  Of  course  it  is  idle  to  guess  at  what  would  have  happened 
had  not  something  else  occurred ;  as  idle  as  it  is  to  say  that 
Christ  did  not  create  Christianity,  but  was  created  by  it :  that 
by  a  mere  chance,  as  it  were,  an  humble  teacher  of  spiritual  and 
magnetic  attraction  became  the  point  of  coalescence  and  crystal- 
lization of  a  consensus  of  expectation,  and  the  centre  of  a  dream 
edifice.  Here  is  Hamlet  with  the  Prince  of  Denmark  omitted 
— yet  this  thin  theory  has  lately  been  put  forth  in  the  grave 
name  of  scholarship  ;  whereas,  a  sense  of  humour,  to  say  nothing 
of  a  sense  of  history  and  its  forces,  should  have  hushed  it.  But 
so  potent  is  a  bias  that  it  will  not  only  belittle  Jesus  to  fit  its 
scheme,  but  will  proceed  to  magnify  the  various  would-be  Christs, 
including  the  Philostratus  romance  of  "  Apollonius  of  Tyana," 
into  rivals.  Even  on  that  basis,  the  law  of  "  the  survival  of  the 
fittest  "  would  seem  to  have  settled  the  question,  if  there  were 
a  limit  to  absurdity  when  once  it  is  set  going. 

9  "  Natural  History,"  Chap.  XXX,  p.  i6. 

s«*  History  of  Rome,"  Chap.  XLIII,  p.  5. 


l62        THE  LIVING  WORD   OF  TRUTH 

to  my  God,  in  order  to  worship  thee  as  the 
Mithras."  Nor  was  Nero  less  unworthy  than 
some  others  who  were  clothed  with  divine  attri- 
butes by  this  flitting  dream,  seeking,  pathetically, 
"  a  local  habitation  and  a  name."  Weary  of 
legend,  cultured  beyond  the  credulity  that  be- 
lieves without  evidence,  the  best  classic  minds,  as 
Dr.  Arnold  said  of  Aurelius,  were  *'  sad  and 
agitated,"  stretching  out  their  arms  for  something 
beyond.  Hence  a  yearning  pensiveness,  often 
sinking  into  a  piercing  pathos,  which  Browning 
interpreted  in  Cleon,  as  of  a  long  winter  with  no 
hope  of  summer. 

Among  Hebrew  seers  there  was  the  same  look- 
ing forward,  but  with  less  wistfulness  and  more 
promise.  Nor  is  this  strange,  for  the  Messianic 
hope  had  long  been  the  key-note  both  of  their 
religion  and  of  their  national  hfe.  Heard  in  faint 
hints  from  earliest  times,  it  echoed  through  "  the 
forest  of  the  Psalms,"  gathering  to  its  bosom 
many  wandering  tones  until,  at  last,  it  rose  to 
sublime  music  in  the  closing  chapters  of  Isaiah. 
Those  chapters,  by  whomsoever  written,  are 
among  the  greatest  prophetic  pages  known  among 
men,  wherein  the  soul  of  a  race,  refined  by  suffer- 
ing, became  incandescent  with  ineffable  beauty. 
There  we  behold  a  stately  Figure  walking  the 
dreamy  ways  of  prophecy — majestic  and  sorrow- 
ful, scourged  and  imprisoned,  His  beauty  marred 
by  the  rude  way  of  the  world,  yet  full  of  grace 


FORESHADOWINGS  163 

and  pity.  From  afar  the  lonely  watcher  seemed 
to  see,  as  through  a  glass  darkly,  the  slowly  com- 
ing Christ,  and  in  striving  to  hail  Him  the  seer 
himself  became  a  man  of  sorrow  and  acquainted 
with  grief,  as  it  were  the  first  miracle  of  His 
spirit.  In  the  stress  and  agony  of  his  day,  in  the 
solitude  of  his  sorrow,  his  own  creative  love  be- 
came prophetic,  and  he  sought  to  be  the  Messiah 
of  whom  he  prophesied.  Lifted  into  the  shadow 
of  a  mighty  vision,  he  was  "  the  Almost  Christ, 
the  Christ  of  the  Night — the  Shadow  Christ."  * 

Here,  manifestly,  was  a  spiritual  experience,  a 
prophetic  vision,  as  far  removed  from  the  wistful 
dreams  of  classic  poets — who  saw  no  Suffering 
Servant,  tortured  and  disfigured,  but  a  royal  ruler 
in  a  robe  of  purple — as  it  was  from  the  crass 
political  Messiah  of  apostate  Jewish  statesmen 
like  Josephus,  who,  forgetting  the  great  spiritual 
tradition  of  his  people,  gave  his  allegiance  to 
Vespasian  as  the  Messiah.  And  it  was  in  that 
noble  spiritual  tradition  that  Jesus  stood,  as  if 
the  faiths  and  hopes  and  high  prophetic  longings 
of  His  race  had  woven  the  seamless  robe  in  which 
His  divine  beauty  was  clad.  How  unlike  all 
others  was  the  Teacher  who  swayed  men  by  "  that 
strange  power  called  weakness,"  while  proclaim- 

i"The  Shadow  Christ,"  by  Gerald  Stanley  Lee  (1905).  A 
book  of  singular  beauty,  vividness,  and  insight,  interpreting  the 
foregleams  of  Christ  in  the  Old  Testament,  as  only  a  poet  can 
do. 


l64        THE  LIVING  WORD  OF  TRUTH 

ing  Love  as  the  one  sweet  energy  whereby  the 
world  is  to  be  redeemed.  This  it  was — a  divine 
love  which  had  hovered  over  man  as  a  holy  dream, 
a  flitting  vision,  an  echoing  voice — that  Jesus  in- 
carnated in  a  form  dross-drained  and  perfect,  ful- 
filling the  radiant  intimations  of  the  highest 
minds  and  satisfying  the  God-lonesomeness  of  the 
race.  The  dim  became  vivid,  the  awful  became 
lovely,  and  a  new  light  and  power  and  hope  came 
upon  man  in  the  midst  of  the  years. 

So  sublime  a  reality  would  naturally  be  adum- 
brated in  the  highest  and  best  souls  ages  before 
its  advent  in  history ;  and  it  may  well  have  been 
forefelt  not  only  by  the  prophets  and  singers  of 
the  Bible,  but  also,  for  aught  we  know,  in  the 
Buddha  and  Krishna  legends,  as  well  as  in  the 
dreams  of  Plato.  All  the  great  ideals  are  largely 
mysterious,  and  the  words,  even  of  the  wisest,  are 
as  often  as  not  "  wiser  than  those  that  use  them." 
The  fact  that  Jesus,  when  He  did  come,  absorbed 
into  Himself  the  devotion  formerly  given  to 
mythical  beings,  would  seem  to  show  that  He 
was  a  fulfillment  of  a  universal  prophecy. 
Strange,  indeed,  is  the  suggestion  that  these 
foregleams  of  the  Christ-idea,  from  whatever 
source,  make  the  historical  Jesus  unnecessary 
and  unreal ;  whereas  they  add  enormously  to  the 
impressiveness  of  His  life  as  an  answer  to  human 
seeking.  What  had  hitherto  been  a  dream,  or  at 
most  a  hypostasis  of  aspiration,  found  embodiment 


FORESHADOWINGS  165 

in  a  historic  personality  who  was  equal  to  an  ex- 
pression of  "  the  human  life  of  God  "  upon  earth. 
As  a  result,  there  came  into  the  world  a  spiritual 
power  which  overthrew  the  Roman  Pantheon, 
and  established  upon  the  ruins  of  old  philosophies 
and  decaying  cults  a  new  order  of  life.  No 
mere  dream,  made  to  clothe  a  peasant  teacher, 
could  thus  have  grasped  the  crumbling  classic 
world  and  revived,  reshaped  and  rescued  it  from 
the  mire  of  its  own  rot. 

As  to  that  other  and  higher  genealogy  of  Jesus 
— His  heredity  from  God,  and  His  sense  of  a 
fellowship  with  His  Father  before  His  advent  in 
the  flesh — it  is  not  within  the  scope  or  wish  of 
this  paper  to  inquire.  So  far  as  His  own  sayings 
were  reported,  He  Himself  spoke  of  these  things 
in  words  cryptic  and  dim,  and  where  He  was  so 
reserved  it  ill  becomes  others  to  be  talkative. 
The  dogma  of  the  Kenosis  has  been  appealed  to, 
but  even  when  it  is  most  vividly  set  forth  *  it  emits 

1 «  The  Person  and  Place  of  Christ,"  by  P.  T.  Forsyth  (1909). 
A  book  of  great  power,  aglow  with  divine  fii"e  and  deeply  sug- 
gestive, though  its  epigrams  often  dazzle  us.  As  of  the  dogma 
of  the  Kenosis,  or  self-emptying,  of  Christ,  so  with  the  effort  of 
Dr.  Sanday  to  locate  His  divinity  in  His  subconscious  nature, 
whence  it  slowly  emerged  into  His  conscious  life  ('*  Personality 
in  Christ  and  in  Ourselves,"  1911).  They  are  alike  dark  and 
difficult,  if  not  doubtful.  Nor  is  there  much  light  in  the  sug- 
gestion of  Dr.  Temple  that  "  the  form  of  His  consciousness  is 
human,  the  content  divine "  ("  The  Nature  of  Personality," 
191 1).  The  limitation  of  the  knowledge  of  Jesus  Himself  is 
indubitable — even  about  Himself. 


1 66        THE   LIVING  WORD   OF  TRUTH 

a  feeble  light,  and  leaves  much  that  is  dark. 
There  is,  indeed,  a  mystery  about  even  the  most 
ordinary  person,  while  above  the  spiritually  great 
brood  clouds  and  darkness  which  none  may 
penetrate.  If  we  cannot  fathom  our  own  nature, 
there  is  httle  hope  that  we  can  measure  One  who 
was,  as  all  admit,  the  most  majestic  of  all  the 
masters  and  deliverers  of  hfe  that  ever  came  forth 
*'  out  of  the  bosom  of  humanity."  It  is  enough 
to  say  with  Carlyle — who,  though  he  truncated 
his  faith,  had  always  something  of  the  genius  and 
passion  of  the  prophets,  joined  with  the  insight 
of  a  historian — that  the  sphere  melody  of  Jesus, 
"  flowing  in  wild,  native  tones,  took  captive  the 
souls  of  men,  and,  being  of  a  truth  sphere  melody, 
still  flows  and  sounds,  though  now  with  thou- 
sand-fold accompaniments  and  rich  symphonies, 
through  all  our  hearts,  and  modulates  and  divinely 
leads  them." 


II 

THE  WORD  MADE  FLESH 

I 

ALL  along  there  have  been  those  who 
denied  that  such  a  person  as  Jesus  ever 
existed,  though  they  are  now  almost  an 
extinct  race.  Some  held  that  He  was  an  accu- 
mulation of  abstract  attributes,  fortuitously  as- 
sembled by  the  enchantment  of  a  worshipful 
imagination ;  a  figure  woven  of  the  wistful 
longings  of  men  and  clothed  in  the  robe  of 
myth.  Others  saw  Him  as  an  achievement  of 
romance — a  mouthpiece  for  the  spiritual  refine- 
ments and  ethical  maxims  of  certain  great  un- 
known geniuses  whose  teachings  had  long  pre- 
vailed as  an  esoteric  cult.  Either  theory,  frail  at 
best,  falls  flat  by  its  own  weight,  as  being  not 
only  without  basis  in  fact,  but  too  great  a  tax  on 
our  credulity.  History  aside,  on  literary  grounds 
they  ask  us  to  believe  an  incredible  thing — that 
the  lowly  hands  of  fisherfolk,  more  familiar  with 
nets  than  with  words,  created  a  Figure  more 
majestic,  more  winsome,  more  appealing,  than 
the  greatest  literary  geniuses  have  ever  been 
able  to  achieve,  and  made  Him  speak  "  as  never 
man  spake."     Or  that  a  few  unknown  cultists  in- 

167 


1 68        THE  LIVING  WORD   OF  TRUTH 

vented  a  Being  so  real,  so  living,  so  captivating, 
that  for  ages  He  was  mistaken  for  a  reality, 
equally  by  the  most  devout  saints  and  the  most 
critical  intellects — surely  that  were  a  supreme 
miracle. 

Yet,  strangely  enough,  some  such  theory  has 
been  revamped  of  late  and  set  forth  as  the  key 
to  the  religious  life,  with  this  difference,  however, 
between  its  old  form  and  the  new.*  It  now 
affirms  that  there  is  a  living,  Eternal  Christ — a 
personalized  aspect  of  the  human  life  of  God — 
unfolding  in  all  mankind,  and  that  this  Eternal 
Christ  is  the  life  of  Christianity.  So  far  forth,  the 
theory  is  true ;  but  it  is  a  strange  inversion  of 
realities  to  go  on  and  argue  that,  because  there 
is  an  eternal  Christ-ideal,  Jesus  never  existed  as  a 
historical  person,  or  that   if  He  did  it  does  not 

i"The  Christ  Myth,"  by  Arthur  Drews  (1910).  Back  of 
this  book  is  a  dogma  to  establish  which  the  author  is  willing, 
apparently,  to  go  to  any  length.  He  writes  as  an  almost 
fanatical  monist,  and  in  bitter  opposition  to  what  he  calls  "  the 
poor  and  soulless  faith  in  a  personal  God,  in  freedom  and  im- 
mortality." His  reason  for  wishing  to  get  rid  of  the  historical 
Christ  is  that  He  is  "  the  chief  obstacle  to  a  monistic  religion." 
Judged  by  this  bias,  the  book  is  a  hodge-podge,  taking  familiar 
facts  which  every  one  knows  and  mixing  them  with  much  that 
nobody  knows  except  the  author,  and  stirring  the  whole  into  a 
syllabub,  in  which  anything  may  mean  anything  else.  The 
author  has  read  "  a  frightful  lot,"  as  Goethe  would  say,  but  his 
book  is  valuable  chiefly  as  an  example  of  how  far  a  dogma  will 
lead  a  man.  His  vision  of  the  Eternal  Christ  is  marred  by  a 
100  ardent  zeal  for  monism. 


THE  WORD  MADE  FLESH  1 69 

matter  to  faith — that,  as  a  fact,  He  is  a  myth,  an 
ideal,  or  an  imaginative  symbol,  like  Mithras, 
Osiris,  Krishna,  Agni,  and  the  rest.  Such  jug- 
glery would  be  unworthy  of  notice  but  for  its 
vogue  with  bewildered  but  essentially  believing 
minds  who  are  taken  captive  by  it,  lured  by  its 
emphasis  on  the  Eternal  Christ.  That  from  the 
time-form  of  Jesus  there  emerged  a  Christ-ideal 
that  is  eternal,  is  true ;  but  Jesus  was  and  is  more 
than  an  ideal.  Even  the  ideal  which  He  set  up 
for  our  guiding  would  long  ago  have  grown  dim, 
or  else  faded  altogether,  without  a  living  reality 
to  recreate  and  revivify  it.  Whether  Jesus  was  a 
fact  or  a  myth  does  matter  for  our  faith — matters 
vitally,  and  in  a  manner  not  to  be  overcome  by 
devotion  to  a  vague,  dream-woven,  mystic  Christ 
who  never  walked  among  men. 

In  point  of  fact,  it  is  no  longer  an  open  ques- 
tion, among  historians,  as  to  whether  such  a 
person  as  Jesus  ever  Hved.  That  is  an  historic 
certainty,  attested  in  so  many  ways  that  to  deny 
it  verges  on  the  ridiculous.  Put  aside  the  gospel 
records  as  a  tissue  of  legends,  rule  out  the  wit- 
ness of  Tacitus,  Pliny,  Suetonius,  and  there 
remains  the  fact  of  Christianity,  by  its  very 
genius  the  religion  of  a  Person,  bearing  perpetual 
witness  to  Him  from  whom  it  derived.  As 
Keim,  in  his  *^  Jesu  vo7i  Nazaral'  after  saying 
that  the  religion  of  Christ  goes  always  mysteri- 
ously back   to    His  person,  adds,  "  This    funda- 


lyo        THE  LIVING  WORD  OF  TRUTH 

mental  fact  alone  enables  us  to  understand  the 
religion  which  sprang  from  it."  Criticism  may 
busy  itself  with  the  question  as  to  whether  the 
picture  of  Jesus  in  the  gospel  records  is  a  por- 
traiture or  an  idealization — whether  the  writers 
exhibit  Him  as  He  really  was,  or  as  He  appeared 
to  a  subsequent  age,  transfigured  by  reverence  or 
distorted  by  superstition — but  to  deny  that  He 
ever  lived  is  at  once  futile  and  belated  folly.  "  It 
is  no  use,"  said  the  sane  and  acute  J.  S.  Mill — and 
no  fact  has  leaped  to  light  to  render  his  words  less 
true  than  they  were  when  he  wrote  them  years 
ago — "  it  is  no  use  to  say  that  Christ  as  exhibited 
in  the  Gospels  is  not  historical  and  that  we  know 
not  how  much  of  what  is  admirable  has  been 
superadded  by  the  tradition  of  His  followers. 
The  tradition  of  followers  suffices  to  insert  any 
number  of  marvels,  and  may  have  inserted  all  the 
miracles  which  He  is  reputed  to  have  wrought. 
But  who  among  His  disciples  or  among  their 
prosalytes  was  capable  of  inventing  the  sayings 
ascribed  to  Jesus  or  of  imagining  the  life  and 
character  revealed  in  the  Gospels  ?  Certainly 
not  the  fishermen  of  Galilee ;  as  certainly  not 
St.  Paul,  whose  character  and  idiosyncrasies  were 
of  a  totally  different  sort ;  still  less  the  early 
Christian  writers  in  whom  nothing  is  more  evi- 
dent than  that  the  good  which  was  in  them  was 
all  derived,  as  they  always  professed  that  it  was 
derived,  from  the  higher  source.     .     .     .     About 


THE  WORD   MADE  FLESH  171 

the  life  and  saying  of  Jesus  there  is  a  stamp  of 
personal  originality  combined  with  profundity  of 
insight,  which  .  .  .  must  place  the  Prophet 
of  Nazareth,  even  in  the  estimation  of  those  who 
have  no  beUef  in  His  inspiration,  in  the  very 
first  rank  of  the  men  of  sublime  genius  of  whom 
our  species  can  boast."  ^ 

Such  a  study  as  this  cannot  do  more  than 
glance  at  the  intricate  problems  with  which  crit- 
icism of  the  evangelic  narrative  has  to  deal,  but 
it  may  at  least  emphasize  the  vital  reality  which 
is  so  often  and  so  easily  obscured.  There  are,  as 
every  student  of  comparative  faiths  knows,  strik- 
ing resemblances  between  the  gospel  record  and 
the  lives  of  other  religious  teachers  of  the  East, 
particularly  in  what  the  critics  call  "  the  mythical 
elements."  Dreams,  heavenly  voices,  signs  and 
wonders,  legends  of  virgin  births,  of  the  mysteri- 
ous visits  of  sages,  and  the  like,  were  common 
and  wide-spread  in  the  East  long  before  the  time 
of  Jesus,  and  were  freely  told  of  both  real  and 
imaginary  characters.  So  striking,  indeed,  were 
some  of  these  resemblances  that  at  one  time 
the  Church  was  tempted  to  give  the  name  of 
Buddha  honour  in  its  calendar  of  saints — ^just  as 
Seneca  was  often  cited  like  a  Church  Father  as  a 
Christian  authority,  until  he  was  reclaimed  for 
paganism  by  Erasmus  and  the  humanists.  No 
one  worthy  of  notice  charges  the  gospel  writers 

'  "  Three  Essays  on  Religion,"  by  J.  S.  Mill  (1884). 


172        THE  LIVING  WORD   OF  TRUTH 

with  plagiarism,  but  the  likenesses  are  too  re- 
markable to  be  overlooked.  If  then  we  admit, 
as  some  seem  willing  to  do,^  that  in  trying  to  in- 
terpret and  convey  the  overwhelming  impression 
made  upon  them  by  the  personality  of  Jesus,  the 
writers  made  use  of  ideas  current  in  their  day, 
the  better  to  reach  the  popular  mind,  it  was  only 
natural  that  they  did  so,  and  it  leaves  the  essen- 
tial fact  undimmed.  What  we  have  to  do  is  to 
get  behind  the  form  to  the  vital  reality,  which  is 
a  sure  and  redeeming  possession  of  our  race. 

It  is  not  otherwise  with  the  eschatology  of  the 
Gospels,  now  so  much  emphasized,^  which  is  dis- 

1 "  Christ :  The  Beginnings  of  Dogma,"  by  Johannes  Weiss 
(1910).  But,  though  the  author  is  willing  to  go  to  such 
lengths,  he  does  not  forget  the  essential  fact,  which  is  that  "  the 
less  we  are  able  to  understand  the  Christology  .  .  .  the 
more  decisively  we  are  referred  back  to  Jesus  in  His  own  per- 
sonality. To  understand  Him,  to  suffer  ourselves  to  be  drawn 
by  Him  into  His  life  with  the  Father,  must  mean  more  to  us 
than  the  finding  of  a  formula  of  faith,  with  which  we  might  be 
at  once  dogmatically  correct  and  true  to  history," 

s  By  such  a  student  as  Schweitzer,  to  name  but  a  single  ex- 
ample, whose  "  Quest  of  the  Historical  Jesus  "  (19 10),  though 
accounted  blasphemous  by  some,  is  a  book  of  great  value  and 
charm.  He  follows  the  apocalyptic  current  too  far,  perhaps,  as 
does  Mr.  Garrod  in  his  essay  on  Christ  the  Forerunner  (1906) 
— where  it  is  ingeniously  argued  that  Jesus  did  not  claim  to  be  the 
Teacher  long  foretold,  but  only  a  Forerunner — but  Schweitzer 
does  not  forget  the  essential  thing,  as  witness  his  exquisite 
closing  paragraph.  We  are  willing  to  listen  to  a  critic  who  is 
a  lover  of  the  Christ  whom  he  is  seeking  amid  the  changing 
shadows  of  apocalyptic  vision.  On  the  other  side  see  "  The 
Eschatological  Question  of  the  Gospels,"  by  Cyril  W.  Emmet 
(191 1),  a  scholarly  and  convincing  book. 


THE  WORD   MADE  FLESH  1 73 

tinctively  Jewish,  and  whose  influence  on  Chris- 
tian thought  is  out  of  all  proportion  to  the  worth 
of  its  forms.  Scientific  conceptions  of  the  world 
have  replaced  the  panorama  of  Jewish  apoca- 
lypse in  our  imaginative  forecasts,  but  the  spir- 
itual truth  thus  adumbrated  to  us  is  the  same. 
While  we  may  admit  that  the  details  of  an  eth- 
ical system,  framed  for  a  world  momentarily  about 
to  perish,  can  have  to-day  but  a  partial  validity, 
yet  its  insight  was  sure  and  its  principles  are  en- 
during. It  is  plain,  as  has  been  well  said,*  that 
the  real  interest  of  Jesus  lay  always  in  the  moral 
and  spiritual  experiences  which  gather  round  the 
filial  relation  of  man  to  God,  and  we  are  justified 
in  putting  aside  the  eschatological  element,  if  we 
cannot  interpret  it,  in  order  to  attend  the  more 
closely  to  what   has  been  and  is  of  permanent 

significance. 

II 

What,  then,  is  the  Reality  which  is  thus  our 
chief  concern  and  the  object  of  our  quest  ?  It  is 
the  Fact  of  Christ — the  pervasive,  overmastering, 
transfiguring  power  of  His  unique  personality. 
This  the  gospel  writers  felt,  and  this,  with  a 
skill  of  insight  that  is  beyond  the  reach  of  con- 
scious art,  they  convey  to  us  in  such-wise  that 
it  works  in  us  the  same  wonder  of  faith  and  joy 
that  it  wrought  in  them.     There  is  much  of  Plato 

i"The  Christian  Doctrine  of  Man,"  by  H.  W.   Robinson 
(1911). 


174        THE  LIVING  WORD   OF  TRUTH 

in  the  Socratic  dialogues — more  of  the  disciple, 
it  often  seems,  than  of  the  master — but  the  great 
soul  of  Socrates  was  the  inspiration  of  those  gos- 
pels of  the  intellect.  Just  so,  whatever  part  may 
have  been  played  in  the  development  and  inter- 
pretation of  Christian  faith  by  St.  Paul,  with  his 
emphasis  upon  the  atoning  sacrifice  of  the  death 
on  the  Cross ;  by  St.  John  with  his  Religion  of 
Revealing,  which  is  the  supreme  treasure  of  his 
piety ;  or  by  St.  James  with  his  salutary  insistence 
that  faith  alone,  without  works,  is  empty  and 
dead — Jesus  is  the  power  behind  the  New  Testa- 
ment. 

"  Not,  to  the  modern  mind,  so  much  visibly  in 
it  as  behind  it.  Just  as  science  finds  in  all  phe- 
nomena the  manifestation  of  an  unseen,  ever-pres- 
ent Force,  so  the  investigator  to-day,  turning 
over  the  Christian  records,  feels  himself  at  every 
point  in  contact  with  the  mystery  that  made 
them  possible.  Here,  to  the  scientific  mind,  is 
the  real  question.  For  to  whatever  extent  the 
inaccurate  or  the  legendary  may  have  crept  into 
the  New  Testament,  there  is  one  thing  in  which 
its  absolute  reliability  can  never  be  questioned. 
It  represents,  with  the  accuracy  of  a  hair  balance, 
the  impression  made  upon  its  writers  by  Christ's 
personality.  The  Fourth  Gospel  is  the  echo  from 
the  soul  of  its  writer  of  the  heavenly  voice  that 
had  spoken  to  it.  The  Pauline  Epistles  show  us 
what  one  of  the  deepest  minds  the  world  ever 


THE  WORD  MADE  FLESH  1 75 

produced  felt  about  Jesus.  The  different  reports 
of  these  manifold  collaborateurs  vary  with  all 
manner  of  individual  idiosyncrasy  and  standpoint. 
But  not  one  of  them  fails  to  make  us  under- 
stand that  the  One  whom  he  wrote  about  had 
made  on  the  writer  the  impression  of  something 
heavenly,  mighty,  beautiful  beyond  all  that  was 
human,  of  One  who  had  opened  new  powers  in, 
and  disclosed  new  horizons  to,  his  own  soul."  * 

Not  only  was  this  true  of  a  few  men  who 
recorded  the  story  of  His  life,  but  it  became  true, 
increasingly,  of  the  great,  sad,  decaying  age  that 
followed.  If  one  would  realize  the  magnitude  of 
the  Fact  of  Christ,  and  the  wonder  and  bloom  it 
brought  to  the  wintry  life  of  the  world,  let  him 
go  back  and  read  the  musings  of  the  men  who 
lived  before  Him.  Rich  indeed  was  the  life  of 
ancient  Greece,  whose  treasures  of  philosophy, 
literature  and  art  are  now,  and  must  ever  be,  an 
enduring  part  of  the  wealth  of  the  world,  which 
neither  moth  nor  rust  can  corrupt  nor  thieves 
break  through  and  steal.  Yet,  much  as  we  love 
the  beauty  and  ordered  charm  of  life  in  classic 
times — with  its  love  of  reason,  its  worship  of  the 
holiness  of  beauty,  and  its  hope  not  hopeless  but 
unhopeful — when  we  stand,  a  few  years  later,  on 
this  side  of  Jesus,  we  are  in  a  different  atmosphere. 
Signs  of  spring  are  on  all  sides — a  strange  new 

1 "  Ourselves  and  the  Universe,"  by  J.  Brierley  (1903).    Essay 
on  «  The  Christ  of  To-day." 


176        THE   LIVING  WORD  OF  TRUTH 

hope  welling  up  in  the  hearts  of  men,  opening 
buds  of  joy  and  sunburst  song.  No  wonder  Rome 
was  amazed  by  the  advent,  in  her  decaying 
cities,  of  a  people  whom  torture  could  not  affright 
nor  death  terrify.  Those  men  singing  songs  in 
the  catacombs  must  have  recalled  her  old  time 
hardihood,  only  that  it  was  not  so  much  manly 
as  godlike.  They  had  a  cheerfulness  and  hope, 
a  power  and  patience,  a  fearless  and  glad  enthu- 
siasm, a  heavenly  valour  new  among  men,  attest- 
ing the  power  of  a  new  faith  to  still  the  voice  of 
passion  and  the  sob  of  grief.  Something  had 
happened  since  Socrates  taught  his  religion  of 
"  fair  hopes,"  and  Plato  had  reasoned  in  Athens, 
and  the  classic  poets  had  mused  so  pensively  of 
the  evanescence  of  mortal  life  and  the  vanishing 
of  beauty.  Some  new  Fact  had  entered  the 
world,  lighting  up  its  dark  night,  making  men 
free  from  the  tyranny  of  the  grave  and  joyously 
assured  of  a  life  beyond. 

Of  one  thing  we  are  sure  :  Christianity  would 
not  now  be  in  the  world  had  it  not  been  for  the 
assurance  of  a  living  Christ  ruling  men  from  the 
Unseen.  When  Jesus  went  to  the  Cross,  His 
cause  was  smitten  with  ruin  and  His  followers 
disheartened  and  scattered,  having  seen  Him  die 
in  cruel  tortures,  conquered  by  the  hate  of  His 
foes.  When  malice  had  done  its  worst  and  hope 
was  utterly  gone,  all  at  once  they  found  Him  who 
had  hung  on  that  cross  by  their  side  again,  alive. 


THE  WORD   MADE  FLESH  1 77 

Within  a  few  days  all  was  changed,  and  men  who 
had  been  timid,  fearful  and  hopeless  reassembled 
in  great  joy,  courageous,  hurling  rebuke  into  the 
faces  of  those  who  had  put  their  Master  to  death, 
and  proclaiming  that  He  was  alive.  That  was  all 
they  knew  ;  and  that  convinced  them  that  death 
is  nothing  to  the  soul ;  and  He  became  the  centre 
of  their  faith,  the  master  light  of  all  their  seeing, 
and  the  burden  of  their  message  to  the  ends  of 
the  earth.  Through  long  years  and  trials  un- 
speakable, and  persecutions  the  most  cruel,  they 
went  up  and  down  the  Roman  Empire  telling 
the  story  of  Him,  counting  it  a  joy  to  suffer  in 
His  behalf  and  an  honour  to  die  in  His  sweet  name. 
Some  have  thought  to  explain  this  marvel  by 
saying  that  an  ideal,  pointed  by  a  splendid  recol- 
lection, may  concentrate  itself  into  something 
which,  in  the  vague  language  of  poetry,  may  be 
called  a  Person.  To  what  absurd  lengths  will  not 
men  go  rather  than  accept  a  great,  unmistakable, 
unshakable  fact !  Illusions  may  sway  men  for  a 
time,  but  that  the  stream  of  sweetness,  light  and 
redeeming  power  poured  into  history  by  Christ 
flowed  from  a  filmy,  flitting  illusion  is  more  in- 
credible than  the  gospel  Fact.  But,  if  we  admit 
— as  we  need  not  do — that  such  was  the  case 
with  the  men  who  knew  and  loved  Jesus  in  the 
body — that  the  image  of  Him  was  woven  of  their 
worshipful  love  and  memory — this  cannot  be 
said  of  St.  Paul.     Save  "  in  the  spirit  "  St.  Paul 


1 78        THE   LIVING  WORD   OF  TRUTH 

never  saw  Jesus,  never  heard  His  voice,  yet  the 
sense  of  companionship  with  the  Living  Christ 
was  the  ruhng  passion  of  his  wonderful  hfe.  No 
matter  what  acids  may  be  used  to  dissolve  that 
vision  on  the  Damascus  road,  the  Hfe  of  St.  Paul 
is  a  witness,  irrefragable,  to  the  reality  and  power 
of  the  unseen  Christ,  who  left  the  stony  paths  of 
Judea  to  become  a  perpetual  force  in  the  world. 

But  it  is  now  the  fashion  to  say  that  it  was  not 
Christ,  but  St.  Paul,  who  created  Christianity, 
and  that  Paul  was  an  evangelist  of  a  mystical. 
Eternal  Christ.  Far  otherwise  is  the  fact.  St.  ^ 
Paul  was  indeed  an  apostle  of  the  living.  Eternal 
Christ,  but  his  great  hfe  had  its  inspiration  in  the 
historical  Jesus  who  suffered  under  Pontius  Pilate, 
died,  and  rose  again  from  the  dead.  To  him  the 
Eternal  Christ  and  the  historical  Jesus  were  one 
and  inseparable ;  and  what  was  mystically  true  in 
the  unseen  Christ  had  first  been  historically  true 
in  Jesus,  as  it  must  always  be  or  both  will  evap- 
orate and  melt  into  thin  mist.  Never  once  did 
the  mysticism  of  St.  Paul,  lofty  and  revealing  as 
it  was,  float  away  into  the  cloudland  of  an  un- 
historical  idealism,  which  is  the  resort  of  so  many 
thinkers  in  our  day.  While  he  did  not  preach 
Christ  after  the  flesh,  the  personality  to  whom  he 
owed  his  spiritual  quickening,  his  illumination, 
and  his  invincible  confidence  was  Jesus  of  Naza- 
reth. No  fact  could  be  plainer,  and  not  to  see  it 
is  to  miss  the  key  to  his  life  and  faith. 


Ill 

THE  LIVING  PRESENCE 

IF  Christ  were  only  a  Figure  in  the  past, 
having  a  place  in  history  and  a  date  in 
time,  He  would  be  interesting  indeed,  but 
not  in  the  same  vital  way  that  He  now  is.  What 
is  more  wonderful,  and  none  the  less  a  well-at- 
tested fact,  is  that  through  all  these  ages  He  has 
been  an  eternal  contemporary  with  mankind,  at 
once  an  inner  colleague  of  human  souls  and  an 
unseen  world-power  purifying  and  exalting  our 
life  upon  the  earth.  Not  Moses  so  lives,  nor  the 
prophets ;  not  Plato,  nor  Buddha,  nor  any  other 
torch-bearer  or  teacher  of  men.  Here,  in  truth, 
is  the  fact  of  the  Eternal  Christ — that  there  is  a 
Living  Reality  behind  the  Christ-ideal,  and 
hence,  however  often  defiled  or  defamed,  that 
ideal  is  recreated  by  His  abiding  inspiration* — 
who  otherwise  would  be  only  a  memory,  an  aspi- 
ration, or  a  vague  and  beautiful  dream.  A  Living 
Christ,  hallowing  all  the  years  with  His  humane 
and  heavenly  Presence — that  is  a  wonder  more 

1  "  The  Historic  Christ  in  the  Faith  of  To-day,"  by  W.  A. 
Grist  (191 1). 

179 


l8o        THE  LIVING  WORD   OF  TRUTH 

amazing  than  all  those  recorded  of  Him  in  the 
gospel  story. 

One  reads  history  to  litttle  account  who  does 
not  detect  the  footprints  of  the  journeying  Christ 
all  down  the  years,  His  steps  marked  by  many 
beauties  and  sorrows.  It  was  no  mere  sally  of 
rhetoric,  but  a  calm  statement  of  fact,  when 
Richter  said  that  He  has  lifted  the  gates  of  em- 
pires off  their  hinges  and  turned  the  stream  of 
Time  into  other  channels.  Though  this  earth 
has  been  made,  at  times,  a  hell  in  His  name,  no 
one  else  has  so  restrained  the  brute  in  man, 
quickened  the  heart-beats  of  his  better  nature, 
elevated  his  ideals  and  glorified  his  thought.  He 
has  touched  all  the  ages  since  His  advent,  pene- 
trating them  with  a  purer,  loftier  spirit,  slowly 
softening  an  immemorial  hardness  of  heart,  in- 
spiring men  to  faith  in  God  and  in  their  fellows, 
and  refining  the  fellowships,  aspirations,  and 
activities  of  the  race.  Music,  art,  poetry,  law, 
religion,  the  amenities  of  life,  its  modesties,  its 
courtesies,  its  home  love  and  friendships,  its  tone, 
temper  and  the  spirit  of  its  dream — all  that  makes 
us  men  has  felt  the  touch  of  the  Living  Christ. 
No  one  can  follow  all  His  footsteps,  no  pen  can 
tell  in  what  ways  He  has  wrought  upon  the  inner 
life  of  the  race,  evoking  the  God-spirit  in  man, 
and,  though  often  seemingly  defeated,  and  always 
tragically  delayed,  leading  our  humanity  towards 
its   goal.     Of  all   world-forces    making    for  the 


THE  LIVING  PRESENCE  l8l 

higher   life   of  man,   He   is   at   once   the   most 
powerful  and  the  most  gentle. 

What  glimpses  of  Him  are  seen  in  the  mirror 
of  art,  and  poetry,  and  song,  and  in  those  lives 
of  rare  beauty  in  whom  He  almost  seemed  to 
wear  our  flesh  once  more.  On  the  Roman  road- 
side by  the  Domine  Quo  Vadis,  on  that  spring 
morning  at  Assisi,  in  the  hall  of  the  Round  Table 
at  Winchester,  in  the  clearing  in  a  woodland 
where  the  Merciful  Knight  drew  rein  before  the 
crucifix,  we  follow  Him.  He  was  in  the  life  of 
St.  Francis,  in  the  cell  of  Thomas  a  Kempis,  in 
the  art  of  Giotto,  in  the  "  Divine  Comedy  "of 
Dante,  in  the  thunder  of  Savonarola,  and  in  the 
songs  of  Luther.  He  was  in  "  Les  Miserablesl' 
and  in  the  Dickens  stories  of  the  love  of  little 
children  ;  He  gave  shape  to  the  troubled  marbles  of 
Angelo,  and  beauty  to  the  stained  glass  of  Burne- 
Jones  ;  He  was  with  Lincoln  in  the  White  House. 
Wherever  there  has  been  a  note  of  pity  in  art,  a 
white  flower  of  purity  in  life,  a  song  of  hope  in 
the  night,  a  voice  pleading  for  the  poor,  the 
lowly,  and  the  world-broken,  a  champion  of  those 
that  fail,  there,  somehow,  in  some  form,  is  Christ, 
or  the  soul  of  Christ.  Ever  the  Mystic  Spinner 
plies  His  shuttle ;  ever  the  Weaver  of  hope  sends 
His  rainbows  adrift  across  the  hearts  of  men. 
More  than  an  Influence,  more  than  a  Principle, 
He  returns  again  and  yet  again,  a  vision  and 
a  voice,  to  such  as  have  eyes  to  see  and  ears  to 


l82        THE  LIVING  WORD   OF  TRUTH 

hear.*  No  other  is  thus  reflected,  if  only  as  a 
passer-by,  in  the  vision  and  dream  and  faith  of 
the  race. 

How  vivid,  how  deep  and  many-toned  is  the 
witness  of  historic  Christian  experience,  as  we 
have  it  in  the  lives  of  the  saints  and  mystics,  to 
the  fact  of  the  Living  Christ.  What  a  shining 
company  rise  up  and  give  testimony — from  St. 
Paul  to  Wesley,  from  St.  Augustine  to  Edwards, 
from  St.  Bernard  to  Phillips  Brooks,  from  John 
Huss  to  Horace  Bushnell — how  their  hearts 
burned  within  them  as  He  walked  with  them 
along  the  way.^  In  every  age  and  land,  those 
who  have  followed  Him — by  unfolding  His  divin- 
ity in  their  humanity — have  shown  in  the  atmos- 
phere of  their  thought  and  action  a  quality  of 
life  like  His  own.  Others  may  think  Him  only 
an  Influence,  but  they  know  Him  to  be  a  Living 

1 «  The  Oriental  Christ,"  by  P.  C.  Mozoondar  (1883).  "  Sud- 
denly, it  seemed  to  me  that  close  to  me  there  was  a  holier,  a 
more  blessed,  a  more  loving  personality,  upon  whom  I  might 
repose  my  troubled  head.  Jesus  lay  discovered  in  my  heart  as 
a  strange,  human,  kindred  Love,  as  a  response,  a  sympathetic 
consolation,  an  unpurchased  treasure  to  which  I  was  freely  in- 
vited. Jesus,  from  that  day,  to  me  became  a  reality."  See  the 
entire  preface,  which  is  a  rich  page  in  the  literature  of  the 
human  soul. 

2  With  what  beauty  and  lucidity  this  evidence  of  Christian 
experience  may  be  set  forth  may  be  seen,  for  example,  in  the 
lectures  of  Dr.  R.  W.  Dale,  "  The  Living  Christ  and  the  Four 
Gospels"  (1890),  and,  indeed,  in  a  whole  library  of  literature, 
including  the  great  devotional  classics  of  the  Church. 


THE  LIVING   PRESENCE  183 

Presence — a  beauty  forming  within,  a  continuing 
glory  both  of  character  and  of  hope — raising  them 
from  tombs  of  selfishness,  weariness  and  despair, 
until  the  eternal  life  began  to  be  an  impalpable 
murmur  in  their  hearts.     Said  Santa  Teresa: 

"  I  was  in  prayer  one  day,  when  I  saw  Christ 
close  by  me,  or,  to  speak  more  correctly,  felt 
Him ;  for  I  saw  nothing  with  the  eyes  of  the 
body,  nothing  with  the  eyes  of  the  soul.  He 
seemed  to  me  to  be  close  beside  me ;  and  I  saw, 
too,  that  it  was  He  who  was  speaking  to  me.  I 
was  extremely  afraid  at  first,  and  did  nothing  but 
weep ;  however,  when  He  spoke  to  me  but  one 
word  to  reassure  me,  I  recovered  myself,  and 
was,  as  usual,  calm  and  comforted,  without  any 
fear  whatever.  Jesus  Christ  seemed  to  be  by 
my  side  continually,  and,  as  the  vision  was  not 
imaginary,  I  saw  no  form  ;  but  I  had  a  most 
distinct  feeling  that  He  was  always  on  my  right 
hand,  a  witness  of  all  I  did ;  and  never  at  any 
time,  if  I  was  but  slightly  recollected,  could  I 
be  ignorant  of  His  near  presence."  * 

Such  love  is  not  inspired  by  an  ideal,  however 
lofty,  nor  by  a  figure  in  history,  nor  yet  by  a 
person  living  but  remote,  but  only  by  One  who 
is  real,  living,  and  near.  Think  of  St.  Francis 
and  his  transfiguring  vision,  of  which  it  is  written 
that  "  from  that  hour  his  heart  was  wounded  and 
melted  at  the  remembrance  of  his  Lord."  Those 
1"  Life  of  Santa  Teresa,"  by  herself,  Chap.  XXVII,  pp.  2-5. 


1 84        THE  LIVING  WORD  OF  TRUTH 

who  say  that  we  cannot  know  Christ  as  the 
Middle  Ages,  with  their  vigour  of  faith  and  defect 
of  history,  thought  to  know  Him,  confess  thereby 
that  in  trying  to  make  up  a  defect  of  history  we 
have  fallen  into  a  sadder  defect.  For  many  men 
in  our  day  Christ  has,  indeed,  ceased  to  be  a 
Person  and  a  Friend,  and  has  become  only  an 
impulse  or  an  ideal,  upon  which  we  can  never, 
as  we  fain  would,  lavish  the  devotion  of  an  inti- 
mate love.  Hence  the  penury  of  much  of  our 
religious  life,  and  our  groping  to  know,  ideally, 
what  can  only  be  known  vividly  by  an  experience 
which  abolishes  distance  and  finds  in  friendship 
what  is  lost  in  philosophy.  Yet  such  an  experi- 
ence is  no  less  native  to  our  time  than  it  was  to 
the  past,  as  witness  Phillips  Brooks  whose  epic 
life  is  memorialized  for  us,  with  true  insight,  by 
Saint-Gaudens,  who  shows  him  in  marble,  with 
Christ  standing  just  behind  as  if  whispering  a 
message  into  his  ear.  Nor  was  that  beauty 
unique  in  the  great  preacher  of  Trinity  Temple, 
but  is  a  reality  known  to  a  host  whom  the  world 
knows  not.  For  Christ  is  timeless,  and  those 
who  follow  on  may  know  Him  as  truly,  as 
vividly,  in  our  age  as  ever  He  was  known  and 
loved  in  times  agone. 

When  we  turn  from  the  saints  to  those  who 
from  the  mire  and  the  clay  of  sin  have  been 
rescued  and  redeemed  by  Him,  with  what  joyous 
reality  does   the   Living   Christ  stand  forth.     To 


THE  LIVING  PRESENCE  1 85 

Oscar  Wilde  there  was  something  incredible  in 
the  idea  of  a  young  Galilean  imagining  that  He 
could  bear  upon  His  shoulders  the  burden  of  the 
world — the  sins  of  Nero,  of  Caesar  Borgia,  of 
him  who  was  emperor  of  Rome  and  priest  of 
the  sun;  the  sufferings  of  those  whose  name  is 
legion ;  slaves,  thieves,  outcasts,  people  in  prison, 
and  the  dumb  dwellers  of  the  abyss  whose  silence 
is  heard  only  of  God.  But  when  he  himself  fell 
into  the  depths  of  sin,  and  found  himself  an 
exile  from  man  and  the  sunUght,  in  a  prison  cell 
under  the  shadow  of  colossal  shame,  he  learned 
that  the  incredible  thing  was  true:  that  the 
Living  Christ  can  heal  the  deep  hurt  of  the 
heart  and  cleanse  the  soul  of  sin :  so  that,  at  this 
present  time,  in  this  far-off  age  and  land,  all  who 
come  in  contact  with  Him  in  some  way  find 
that  the  horror  of  their  sin  is  taken  away  and  the 
beauty  of  their  sorrow  is  revealed.  Multitudes 
bear  witness,  with  songs  of  praise  and  hearts 
made  white,  to  this  ineffable  wonder.  What 
though  He  enter  our  hearts  clad  in  tunic  and 
turban,  walking  with  sandalled  feet.  Now,  as  of 
old,  He  stills  the  storms  of  passion,  casts  out  the 
demons  of  envy,  fear,  and  hate,  cleanses  the  lep- 
rous thoughts  that  hide  in  the  caves  of  the 
mind,  and  raises  from  their  tombs  our  dead 
dreams  and  our  long-buried  hopes. 

Nor  must  we  forget  that  vast  multitude  who 
in  meekness  and  loyalty  follow  His    footprints 


l86        THE   LIVING  WORD   OF  TRUTH 

over  the  hills  and  valleys  of  the  years,  as  their 
fathers  followed  Him  before  them.  They  are  as 
the  sands  of  the  sea  for  number,  though  the 
virorld  knows  them  not  and  takes  little  note  of 
their  humble  lives.  But  to  them  Christ  is  a 
sheltering  Rock  in  a  weary  land,  a  wayside 
Spring,  a  Companion  and  a  Friend,  a  Teacher  of 
faith  and  a  Saviour  of  the  soul,  and  their  last 
whispers  are  burdened  with  His  name.  To  them 
His  voice  is  music,  His  words  are  the  philosophy 
of  hfe,  and  His  story  is  the  one  everlasting 
romance  in  a  prosaic  world.  They  cannot  think 
of  Him  without  thinking  of  God  instead ;  and 
when  they  think  of  God  and  wonder  what  is  in 
His  heart,  it  always  comes  back  to  their  trying 
to  conceive  of  Jesus  infinitely  enlarged  in  every 
way.  When  that  vision  is  before  them  they  can 
hear  the  splash  of  great  soft  tears,  falling  from 
the  kind  heavens,  and  they  know,  for  a  brief 
moment,  that  at  the  heart  of  things  there  is  an 
infinite  Pity.  To  Him  they  owe  their  souls, 
their  peace  in  the  midst  of  peril,  what  faith  they 
have  for  to-day  and  what  hope  for  the  morrow. 
To  them  it  is  given  to  know  of  a  truth  that 

"  God  may  have  other  words  for  other  worlds, 
But  for  this  world  the  Word  of  God  is  Christ." 


H 


IV 

THE   NEW  ADVENT 

I 

ERE,  then,  is  the  vast,  indescribable, 
unspeakable  Fact  of  Christ — the  fact  of 
"  One  who  stood  nearer  by  some  space 
to  us  immeasurable  to  that  which  is  infinitely  far  " 
— to  explain  which  we  have  no  adequate  theory. 
When  theologians  try  to  measure  and  fathom 
this  Living  Reality,  at  once  historical  and  experi- 
mental, we  are  made  to  realize  that  even  the 
noblest  intellects  have  no  plummet  wherewith  to 
find  its  bottom.  Nor  do  we  need  any  theory  of 
Christ,  but  rather  to  dispense  with  all  theories 
and  get  back  to  the  living  Fact,  which  can  only 
be  imperfectly  described,  and  which  no  theory 
can  compass.  In  the  Fact  itself,  towering  above 
all  our  dogmas,  the  meaning  and  value  of  life  are 
unveiled  to  us,  and  that  is  all  we  need  to  know. 
It  has  been  said  that  "  a  Christ  who  is  a  mere 
anomaly,  a  riddle  to  the  mind,  can  never  be  the 
true  Lord  of  our  hearts."  *  Yet,  even  so,  with- 
out reducing  Him  to  an  anomaly  or  a  puzzle,  it 
is  open  to  reverent  minds  to  confess  the  futility 
of  all  explanations  of  Him. 

i«  The  Servant  of  God,"  by  W.  B.  Selbie  (191 1). 
187 


1 88        THE  LIVING  WORD  OF  TRUTH 

Among  all  those  who  have  written  about  Jesus, 
only  Renan  leaves  one  with  a  vivid  sense  of  Him 
as  a  living  human  Being.  His  "  Life  of  Jesus  " 
— written  on  the  mud  floor  of  a  Syrian  hut  in  the 
Holy  Land — does  show  us  the  Teacher  in  habit 
as  He  hved/  with  the  warmth  and  colour  of  real- 
ity, reproducing  the  vibrating  air  of  the  East  in 
which  He  moved.  There  we  are  shown  a  real 
historical  personage,  a  teacher  of  great  prophetic 
endowment,  a  spiritual  genius  with  an  insight  and 
loftiness  of  nature  above  his  fellows.  He  is  more 
human,  more  lovable  than  the  older  prophets — 
a  lover  of  birds  and  flowers  and  little  children, 
with  glints  of  humour  in  his  stories,  a  seer,  a 
poet  to  whose  mind,  as  to  a  magnet,  the  great 
and  simple  truths  were  attracted — so  much  so, 
that  he  holds  the  foremost  place  among  the 
epoch-making  religious  masters  of  the  race. 
Renan  held  with  Turgenev  that  Jesus  had  a  face 
"  that  looked  like  the  face  of  all  other  men,  just  a 
common  human  face  " ;  and  he  did  make  vivid  the 
human  Christ  without  which  the  divine  Christ 
must  ever  be  vague,  dreamy,  and  remote.  All  of 
which,  apart  from  his  glib  theories,  is  true  as  far 
as  it  goes,  but  as  a  final  estimate  of  Jesus  it  is 
pitifully  poor.  If  this  be  all,  then  His  words, 
liowever  full  of  beauty,  are  only  so  many  guesses 

*  For  a  recent  study  of  the  human  Christ,  exquisite  in  its 
beauty  and  grace,  see  "  The  Poet  of  Galilee,"  by  W.  E.  Leonard 
(1909). 


THE  NEW  ADVENT  1 89 

at  the  same  old  riddle,  and  His  life  the  story  of 
one  more  brave  seeker  after  a  truth  which,  after 
all,  eludes  us.  Nor  does  it  account  for  the  Christ 
who  is  still  with  us,  not  as  a  sweet,  pathetic  mem- 
ory, but  as  a  Living  Presence  melting  the  hearts 
of  men. 

Others  are  not  content  to  stop  by  saying  that 
Jesus  was  simply  a  God-inspired  man,  and  noth- 
ing more ;  a  man  of  the  same  order  and  quality  as 
the  great  prophets  who  preceded  and  followed 
Him,  and  that  neither  He  nor  they  could  possess 
the  status  of  divinity.  They  go  further  and  say 
that  the  supposed  distinction  between  God  and 
man  does  not  exist ;  that  humanity,  being  the  off- 
spring of  God,  is  essentially  divine ;  and,  therefore, 
that  Jesus  was  a  divine  being  and  spiritually  "  the 
first  born  among  many  brethren."  This,  too,  is 
true  and  inspiring  as  far  as  it  goes;  but  surely 
Channing,  Parker  and  Martineau,  noble  as  they 
were,  did  not  fathom  the  Fact  of  Christ.  They  did 
not  explain  ail  the  facts  with  regard  to  Him  as 
those  facts  are  revealed,  for  instance,  in  the  ex- 
perience of  St.  Augustine  and  Wesley.  Many 
things  taught  by  Calvin,  Wesley  and  Newman 
are  unthinkable  to  some  of  us,  while  nearly  all 
that  Channing,  Emefson  and  Martineau  taught 
seems  reasonable  and  true.  But  if  it  were  a 
choice  between  the  two — as  surely  it  need  not  be 
— some  of  us  would  go  with  Wesley  and  New- 
man.    Their  experience  of  a  rich,  warm,  personal 


IQO        THE   LIVING  WORD  OF  TRUTH 

fellowship  with  a  Living  Master  is  ours,  even  if 
their  theology  is  not.  Whole  areas  of  reality 
were  left  out  of  account  by  Emerson  and  Marti- 
neau,  and  we  have  always  the  feeling  that  if  so 
much  is  true,  more  is  true. 

Some  years  ago  there  arose  a  cry  of  "  Back  to 
Christ,"  and  it  evoked  a  stir  of  enthusiasm  remind- 
ing one  of  the  old  crusades,  only  it  was  an  effort  to 
rescue  the  real  Jesus  from  the  tomb  of  dogma. 
Men  felt  that  if  they  could  only  get  back  to  Jesus 
as  He  really  was,  as  He  lived  and  taught  in  Judea, 
they  would  find  some  One  whom  they  could  love 
and  follow — "  the  lowly  Man  of  Galilee,"  more  real 
and  more  winsome  than  the  august  and  distant 
Christ  of  dogma.  They  wanted  the  sweet-voiced 
Teacher  of  the  Fatherhood  of  God  and  the 
Brotherhood  of  Man,  in  whom  truth  had  wedded 
beauty,  and  they  firmly  beheved  that  He  was 
there  to  be  found.  All  that  was  needed  was  to 
throw  off  the  mass  of  dogmatic  accretions  that 
had  been  imposed  upon  Him,  and  then,  they 
were  sure.  He  would  stand  forth.  For  a  time 
this  quest  seemed  to  sweep  everything  before  it. 
There  were  many  lives  of  Jesus,  after  the  manner 
of  Renan  and  Seeley,  and  various  studies  of  Him 
by  Harnack,  Sabatier,  Bossuet  and  others.  All 
this  as  a  protest,  no  doubt,  against  a  too  formal 
dogma  which  had  long  made  Christ  too  stately 
and  stern,  if  not  almost  forbidding,  like  the 
strange,  mystical  figure  carved  by  Saint-Gaudens 


THE  NEW  ADVENT  I9I 

on  the  Adams  monument — a  Sphinx  figure 
which  one  knows  not  whether  to  call  Grief,  Pa- 
tience, or  Power. 

Then  it  was  that  the  historical  criticism  began 
to  do  its  work,  and  little  by  little,  step  by  step, 
as  it  made  its  way  back  through  the  years,  it 
found  all  that  these  seekers  after  Jesus  had 
dreamed,  but  much  else  besides.  The  Christ 
who  emerged  from  these  patient  and  industrious 
searchings  seemed  to  be  a  blend  of  the  picture 
painted  by  Renan  and  by  the  dogmas  of  the 
creeds.  He  was  not  simply  a  mild  and  gentle 
Teacher,  too  great  for  His  age,  who  essayed  to 
make  men  know  the  meaning  of  the  word  Love, 
going  at  last  to  His  death  as  a  martyr.  He  was 
all  that,  indeed,  but  much  more — a  Being  of  light 
and  flame  and  power,  a  wielder  of  thunderbolts 
as  well  as  a  wooer  of  souls,  not  only  a  Teacher 
but  a  Lord  of  men.  He  spoke  of  Himself  not  so 
much  as  a  man  among  men,  but  as  a  Man  from 
heaven,  a  divine  instrument  long  expected,  long 
foretold,  through  whom  man  was  to  be  brought 
into  right  relations  with  God  ;  that  He  had  come, 
indeed,  to  teach  a  higher  truth,  but  also  to  die  a 
death  of  mysterious  efficacy,  and  that  this,  more 
than  His  words,  was  of  principal  benefit  to  the 
race.  While  this  was  not  the  Christ  whom  the  crit- 
ics themselves  wished  to  find,  none  the  less  we 
may  be  grateful  for  the  outcome,  because  it  made 
men  realize  that  Christ  is  greater  than  we  know. 


192        THE  LIVING  WORD   OF  TRUTH 

Hence  a  certain  vagueness  in  the  thought  of 
our  age  in  regard  to  Jesus,  which  means  that  we 
are  more  than  ever  aware  of  how  vast  and  inde- 
finable a  ReaHty  He  is.  No  longer  do  we  follow 
a  Christ  who  is  only  one  of  ourselves,  guessing 
at  the  riddle  of  life  as  we  have  to  do,  knowing 
nothing  certainly  either  of  His  own  destiny  or 
ours ;  but  a  Master  in  other  worlds  than  this,  a 
revealer  of  the  heart  of  things.  Yet  this  Being 
who  towers  so  far  above  us  is  still  so  close  to  us, 
and  His  whole  life  so  entwined  with  ours,  that 
we  somehow  feel  that  what  is  true  of  Him  is  in 
some  degree  true,  potentially,  of  ourselves.  How 
these  two  things  can  be  united  may  be  hard  to 
know,  but  they  are  equally  vivid  and  equally 
blessed  in  the  faith  of  to-day.  What  shapes 
faith  may  take  in  times  to  come  no  man  can  tell, 
but  it  is  safe  to  predict  that  its  chief  adventures 
will  be  yet  further  discoveries  of  the  Eternal 
Christ  who  came  among  men,  and  is  daily  com- 
ing in  beauty  and  power,  to  bring  humanity  to 
its  goal.  While  all  this  may  seem  vague  and  of 
little  import,  if  it  leaves  us  with  a  new  sense  of 
wonder  at  the  mystery  of  Christ  it  will  have  made 
us  wise,  perhaps,  to  the  saving  of  faith  and  the 
enrichment  of  hfe. 

n 

How  can  the  Eternal  Christ  become  more  real, 
not  only  as  an  Influence  but  as  a  Living  Presence 


THE  NEW  ADVENT  1 93 

to  men  like  ourselves  in  a  far-off  acje?  Too 
many  of  us  are  like  those  two  young  Romans  in 
the  days  of  Marcus  Aurelius,  who  did  not  know 
that  Jesus  still  lived,  though  they  felt  the  spell  of 
His  legend ;  like  Vinicius  and  Mariiis  the  Epiat- 
rea7t.  We  read  the  record  of  His  life  with  a 
mingled  sense  of  wonder  and  regret,  as  a  story 
beautiful,  indeed,  but  too  fair  and  frail  ever  to 
have  been  true.  There  it  is — the  tragedy  of  One 
dying  for  untold  myriads  who  reject,  and  will  re- 
ject, the  grace  of  His  sacrifice,  and  for  other 
myriads  who,  mistaking  blindly  the  meaning  of  it 
all,  work  evil  in  His  name.  Looking  out  over  the 
rough  world,  that  Biography  of  Pity  seems,  at 
times,  as  vain  as  all  the  vain  things  proclaimed  of 
Solomon,  or  else  as  unreal  as  a  dream.  We  do 
not  deny  His  words,  which  are  like  great  music,  but 
His  voice  "  comes  strange  over  years  of  change," 
faint,  dreamy,  and  far  away  from  our  noisy  age. 
Yet  are  we  haunted  by  Him,  who  shapes  even 
the  literature  of  doubt,  as  though  by  some  fatal- 
ity of  thought  men  who  do  not  find  Him  must 
still  seek  Him,  as  Isis  sought  for  the  body  of 
Osiris.*     Often  enough  He  does  seem  far  away, 

J  May  we  not  say  that  "  the  Messianic  hope  "  in  the  writings 
of  Emerson,  noted  by  every  student,  is  an  example  ?  Of  our 
Yankee  Plato  it  must  be  said — with  the  utmost  reverence  for  a 
great  soul,  with  gratitude  for  his  revealing,  if  sometimes  va- 
grant, insights,  and  with  an  honourable  pride  in  his  character 
and   genius — that  he  did  not  see  Jesus  as  He  was  and  is ;  and, 


194        THE  LIVING  WORD  OF  TRUTH 

but  there  are  moments  when  He  is  subtly  with 
us  as  an  ally  of  that  within  us,  our  higher  Self, 
akin  to  the  divine — that  seed  which  sleepeth  until 
we  have  watered  and  nourished  the  ground  upon 
which  it  lies ;  that  voice  of  God  which  we  will  one 
day  no  longer  den}^ — though  we  are  slow  of  heart 
and  dull  of  eyes,  and  know  not  who  it  is  that  wakes 
to  life  the  man  we  ought  to  be.  Almost  without 
our  knowing  it,  by  a  gentle  strategy,  a  delicate 
adroitness.  Something  brings  us  to  a  knowledge  of 
our  better  self,  like  a  good  teacher  trying  to 
evoke  what  is  in  a  shy,  wayward  child.  Far 
away  though  He  may  seem.  His  simple  words,  as 
those  of  no  other,  do  uplift  and  fortify  the  soul 
against  the  Shadow  that  waits  for  every  man. 
Nor  can  any  deny  that  the  only  things  worth 
while  are  the  things  thought  and  felt  and  done  in 
accord  with  His  spirit  and  example,  in  sympathy 
with  His  life,  sweet,  appealing,  and  serene. 
What  man  does  not  know  what  the  poet  meant 
when,  looking  into  the  face  of  a  little  child, 
touched  by  the  memory  of  his  own  stainless  days, 
he  wrote : 

not  seeing  Him,  he  remained,  in  a  way,  always  a  seeker.  As 
Holmes  said,  Emerson  went  about  peeping  into  every  cradle 
looking  for  a  Messiali.  So  Nietzsche,  who  taught  atheism  with 
the  passion  of  a  devotee  and  the  mystical,  alluring  style  of  a 
poet,  proclaimed  a  Stipcnnan  who  is  to  redeem  us  from  the 
slavery  of  morality  and  the  weakness  of  pity.  Thus,  while 
denying  Jesus,  he  was  actually  setting  up  an  ugly  and  distorted 
effigy  of  Him. 


THE   NEW  ADVENT  I95 

''So  I  hid  my  face  in  the  grass, 
AVhispered,  *  Listen  to  my  despair; 
I  repent  me  of  all  1  did — 
Speak  a  little!'" 

No  other  theme  stirs  us  so  deeply,  so  tenderly, 
and  withal  so  wistfully,  with  a  kind  of  melancholy 
in  joy,  as  the  story  of  His  pilgrimage  and  the 
wonder  of  His  life.  When  we  see  a  Christ-man 
on  the  stage — whether  as  "  The  Servant  in  the 
House,"  *  wearing  the  robes  of  the  East,  with  a 
wise,  half-humorous  sagacity  putting  the  Church 
to  rights,  or  as  a  "  Passer-by  "  ^  clad  in  the  garb  of 
to-day,  visiting  a  dingy  boarding-house,  restoring 
sincerity  of  life,  smiling  away  the  shams  which 
make  men  and  women  petty  and  mean,  and 
revealing  to  all,  as  if  a  gulf  had  opened  at  their 
feet,  the  utter  folly  and  shame  of  selfishness — we 
go  away  from  the  playhouse  subdued,  musing 
of  what  life  may  be  when  attuned  to  His  spirit  of 
Love,  which  sees  the  good  beneath  the  evil,  and, 
by  believing  in  it,  evokes  it.  Not  less  so  when 
we  engage  in  works  of  social  betterment,  the 
logic  of  which  involves  faith  in  the  worth  of  the 
human  soul,  in  the  possibility  of  reclaiming  it 
from  evil,  and  the  suggestion  of  a  Fellow-worker 
at  our  task ;  and  the  nobler  our  endeavour  the  less 
able  are  we  to  dispense  with  Him  to  maintain  its 
enthusiasm  and  support  its  faith.     At  every  turn 

i"The  Servant  in  the  House,"  by  C.  R.  Kennedy  (1908). 
2  «  The  Passing  of  the  Third  Floor  Back,"  by  J.  K.  Jerome 
(1909). 


196        THE  LIVING  WORD   OF  TRUTH 

of  the  road  towards  a  higher,  juster,  more  merci- 
ful hfe  a  Figure  is  seen  moving  on  before  beckon- 
ing us  towards  the  Ideal. 

How  may  He  become  real  to  us  as  a  Living 
Presence?  Judging  by  the  lives  of  those  who 
have  found  Him  to  be  such,  it  is  by  following  in 
His  footsteps,  by  obeying  the  promptings  of  our 
own  souls  urging  us  to  a  life  of  purity  and  self- 
giving  service,  as  He  lived  it  and  taught  it.  No 
man  has  a  right  to  deny  this  fact  unless  he  has  put 
it  to  the  test,  and  those  who  have  tried  it  do  not 
question  it.  Until  we  have  thus  made  trial  of  the 
teaching  of  Jesus,  our  doubts,  of  whatever  kind, 
are  invalid  and  open  to  doubt.  Only  as  we 
identify  ourselves  with  our  fellow  souls  in  their 
dire  need,  sit  where  they  sit,  hope  for  those  who 
have  no  hope,  and  love  for  those  who  cannot  love, 
do  we  know  Christ  and  the  eternal  quality  of  His 
life.  He  comes  to  us  as  One  unknown,  as  of  old,  by 
the  lakeside.  He  came  to  those  who  knew  Him  not. 
He  speaks  to  us  the  same  words,  "  Follow  thou 
Me  !  "  and  sets  us  the  task  which  He  has  to  fulfill  in 
our  time.  He  commands,  and  to  those  who  obey 
Him,  whether  they  be  simple  or  wise,  He  reveals 
Himself  in  the  toils,  the  conflicts,  the  sufferings 
they  pass  through  in  His  fellowship,  and,  as  an  inef- 
fable mystery,  they  learn  in  their  own  experience 
vjho  He  is,^ — that  He  is  a  Living  Friend  and  Saviour. 

^ "  The  Quest  of  the  Historical  Jesus,"  by  Dr.  Schweitzer 
(1910.) 


THE  NEW   ADVENT  197 

III 

Let  him  doubt  who  will,  it  is  still  true  that 
Christ  does  live  in  the  hearts  of  men,  some  of 
them  all  unawares,  in  deeds  of  Love  and  Pity  and 
Beauty  the  world  over.  Those  who  go  back  to 
the  far  past  and  prove,  by  sifting  documents  and 
marshalling  evidence,  that  Jesus  rose  from  the 
dead,  render  service  to  faith.  But,  were  it  ever 
so  well  attested  that  He  did  so  rise  and  make 
Himself  known  in  gardens  or  shut  chambers  or 
by  the  shore  of  a  lake  at  dawn,  it  would  still  be  a 
fact  in  a  distant  time  unlike  our  own.  More  vital 
is  the  fact  that  He  is  now  a  Living  Reality,  a 
hallowing  Presence,  touching  us  this  day  to  finer 
issues,  and  with  His  mild  persistence  urging  and 
lifting  us  to  the  highest  life.  Men  may  deny  this 
as  a  fact,  they  may  fight  against  it,  but  they  can- 
not always  resist  the  gentle  and  persuasive  appeal 
of  a  Reality  that  is  at  once  a  rebuke  and  an  in- 
vitation to  their  souls. 

Amid  the  thin  fancies  of  sceptical  minds,  Christ 
stands  forth  in  our  troubled  and  hurrying  age  as 
a  supreme  Reality,  an  invisible  world-power  ma- 
king for  beauty,  pity  and  friendship  upon  earth. 
Led  by  Him,  men  are  slowly  learning  that  God 
is  everywhere,  seeing  all,  hearing  all,  loving  all, 
and  forgetting  none — a  God  in  whom  all  may 
trust,  whose  character  is  boundless  benevolence, 
and  whose  mercy  is  as  abundant  as  the  light  and 
as   impartial   as    the    air   that   belts   the  earth. 


198        THE   LIVING  WORD   OF  TRUTH 

Subtle  bonds  of  sympathy  and  friendship  stretch 
out  from  us,  and  to  us,  all  around  the  world — 
bonds  woven  by  Him ;  a  larger  brotherhood,  a 
broader  tolerance,  and  a  keener  divination  of  the 
good  in  men.  He  is  a  part  of  the  life  of  us  all, 
whether  we  admit  it  or  not— a  sweet  Charity  soft- 
ening the  hard  ways  of  the  world,  a  delicate 
Purity  shaming  our  uncleanness,  a  beautiful 
Justice  pleading  for  the  poor  and  the  forlorn — 
and  He  will  be  a  legacy  to  our  descendants,  with 
whatsoever  else  of  the  good  and  the  true  we  may 
bequeath  to  them,  in  the  very  fibre  of  their 
being.  Long  after  we  have  vanished.  He  will  be 
giving  beneficent  tendency  to  all  the  piteous, 
passionate  and  pathetic  life  that  shall  flourish  in 
times  to  come.  The  impetus  given  by  Him  to 
the  latent  nobilities  of  the  race  shall  never  end, 
and  the  men  of  the  future  will  inevitably  realize 
some  of  the  beauty  of  the  dreams  He  has  taught 
us  to  dream.  Here  is  the  message  of  the 
Church — to  make  the  Eternal  Christ  real  and 
eloquent  to  men — and  by  this  sign  it  will  con- 
quer. 

Nature,  we  know,  is  inevitable  in  her  laws,  in 
her  movements,  in  her  high  manner.  The 
tides  ebb  and  flow  and  no  man  can  stay,  or 
hasten,  them.  Season  follows  season,  with  no 
break  in  the  immemorial  sequence,  like  some 
stately  ritual  with  "  woven  hymns  of  night  and 
day."     Over   field  and   factory,  over  palace  and 


THE  NEW  ADVENT  I99 

hut,  spring  pours  its  flood  of  light  and  joy, 
melting  the  snow  and  waking  up  the  seeds 
sleeping  in  the  earth.  All  things  respond  to  the 
magic  of  its  noiseless  touch,  to  the  might  of  its 
gentleness.  There  is  something  like  that  in  the 
ministry  of  the  Living  Christ.  He  sways  men, 
even  in  their  innermost  thought,  by  a  sweet  and 
beautiful  fatalism.  His  influence  is  as  irresistible 
as  the  flow  of  the  tides  and  the  march  of  the 
seasons,  because  it  is  gentle. 

The  victory  of  Christ  is  inevitable.  He  will 
yet  have  His  way  with  this  hard  old  world  to 
the  confounding  of  all  unkindness,  all  unclean- 
ness.  Ultimately  every  tyranny  shall  fall,  every 
Bastile  crumble.  One  Spirit  commands  the 
scene,  explaining  while  it  prophesies  the  triumph 
of  Love — the  Spirit  of  the  Eternal  Christ.  In 
the  great,  noisy,  murky  foundry  of  the  world  a 
Bell  is  somehow  being  cast  that  shall  ring  His 
praise  alone  — 

"  Ring  in  the  valiant  man,  the  free, 
The  larger  heart,  the  kindlier  hand  ; 
Ring  out  the  darkness  of  the  land, 
Ring  in  the  Christ  that  is  to  be." 


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